Bathurst Hockey Association is still aiming to start its local senior competitions next month, but president Kent Bestwick said there's been a lack of communication from authorities about bringing contact back into the game.
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Hockey clubs have returned to training, however, like all grassroots sports, non-contact is not allowed.
And while Bestwick said the competition is planning to get underway on Saturday, July 18, he's still waiting on more information to come through.
"At this stage, we're planning on having some sort of competition, but I just don't know, due to numbers and a lack of information from the state government in regard to bringing contact back into the game," he said.
"At the moment all our training is non-contact, so it's going to be an awfully funny game of hockey if you can't tackle anyone.
At the moment all our training is non-contact, so it's going to be an awfully funny game of hockey if you can't tackle anyone.
- Bathurst Hockey Association president Kent Bestwick
"I'm sort of waiting for more information to come through."
Bestwick said he assumes that the local women's competition will be played, while there's a meeting on Tuesday night for the men's to see if there is enough numbers.
The men's 2020 Premier League Hockey competition was cancelled late last month, but the women's equivalent will have an 11-week season starting from July 18.
"Everyone is just sitting on their hands waiting to see what the government comes up with," Bestwick said.
"Hockey NSW has told us we can start training and we've got all our COVID-19 plan approved and council has approved it, so we've got all our stuff in place.
"We're just waiting where we stand on this non-contact training."
When it comes to social distancing training, Bestwick said the Cooke Hockey Complex is well set-up to limit contact between players and other people in the community.
"We're lucky we can confine ourselves, in that we can section off three areas of the complex and limit the contact people have with each other," he said.
"We're forging ahead with July 18 as our date. That hasn't changed at all, at the moment. We're still looking at that day.
"It's just we don't know where we stand on how we'll play the game.
"We don't know how it's going to fall. Whether it's going to be 11-a-side hockey and two officials or nine-a-side with two officials, we don't know."
In last year's senior local competitions, St Pat's White defeated Souths Hawkies 5-2 in the men's first grade competition, with skipper Brent Naylor scoring a hat-trick for his premiership-winning team.
In the women's equivalent, Bec Bosianek scored twice as Kelso got the better of Souths 5-2 in the grand final.
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