THE weekend of September 11 and 12 - that is the new target for the commencement of the Group 10 finals series and chairman Linore Zamparini is adamant he wants it to involve the top five sides.
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Group 10 announced on Tuesday that the last round of the regular season slated to take place this weekend would not proceed due to the lockdown of regional New South Wales designed to stop the spread of COVID-19.
That regional lockdown was originally for seven days, but on Thursday morning it was announced the period would be extended until at least August 28.
It means Group 10 is unable start finals that weekend as had been hoped. But Zamparini and his fellow management team had already thought of what to do in that scenario.
They had worked on contingencies that could see the season extended up until the weekend of October 16-17 if required.
"Now that it's [lockdown] gone that little bit extra, we've got to have that two weeks for training. So now we will look to start training from the 29th and they can train that next weekend, then we will start the following weekend," Zamparini said.
"We've been talking the last three days, we had a zoom meeting yesterday [Wednesday] to work out how to get through it and we said that we'll put this in place now.
"Look you would've been silly if you didn't think it was going to change, you would've had your head in the sand I think.
"Hopefully the lockdown does the job ... COVID doesn't have legs does it?"
While other regional sporting competitions in the Central West have altered the structure of their finals series due to the lockdown, Zamparini wants Group 10s to remain the same. That's a five-time, four week scenario.
"There was talk of going a different way, but that's how we started and that's how we should finish. We started the competition with plans for a top five, so that's how we want to finish it," he said.
Orange CYMS finished the regular season as minor premiers in premier league followed by Bathurst Panthers, Mudgee Dragons, Orange Hawks and St Pat's in fifth.
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