GRAHAM Ward began 2020 excited to see what the blue and whites could do across the Group 10 Rugby League senior competitions, but in recent months the COVID-19 outbreak changed the opinion of the St Pat's president.
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His Saints couldn't train, the club's sponsors were impacted and no concrete start date had been given.
It meant that when all Group 10 clubs met to discuss the 2020 season on Tuesday night, Ward felt it was 'inevitable' that senior competitions would be cancelled.
That is exactly what happened, with member clubs voting unanimously to cancel the premier league, first division and league tag competitions for 2020.
"Disappointed but the inevitable happened because we really hadn't got any firm direction," Ward said.
"Even all the players now, they were keen as mustard at the start of the year but the longer this has gone on, the less interested they have become.
"I spoke to Zac [Merrit, premier league player-coach] and he said they'd be happy to have the year off and recharge the batteries and start again for 2021.
"It's not a decision that was taken lightly. When the pandemic first happened we were thinking 'Yes, we'll get over it, we'll get into it and try and get some sort of season in.' But as time goes by people have had work commitments change and it's hard to get enthused in the middle of winter in Bathurst.
"You've also got to think about the liabilities, if something happened where does the liability lay? We are all volunteers. So that was part of the decision as well."
While the state government did approve a July 1 start date for senior community sport on Wednesday morning, Ward said that changed little for Group 10 clubs.
"There are still restrictions and those restrictions create an enormous amount of work for people and all country rugby league committee people are volunteers. The workload any normal year is pretty high, so that would just make things a lot harder," he said.
"We can now start thinking about 2021, the year off might be good for all clubs, those players with injuries. It might reignite the passion."
