THERE'S currently no plans to move the 2020 Astley Cup from its regular timeslot in term two but the next few weeks will be telling for what this year's edition of the schools competition will look like.
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The three schools involved in the competition are carefully monitoring both the spread of coronavirus and government advice to decide what they'll do.
Bathurst go into the competition this year against Orange and Dubbo chasing a fourth straight title.
The Astley Cup hasn't missed an edition of the event for close to a century, and Bathurst High School principal Ken Barwick said there's no plans at all to change that fact.
"We're awaiting further advice on things like excursions and sporting competitions," he said.
"We were thinking we'd be moving it to term three but we were actually going to see what happens in the next four to five weeks and try to leave it where it's meant to be, and that's in this term.
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"It's a positive sign with kids coming back to school, and if things go well in that transition process and the transmission rates of COVID-19 then you would expect sporting competitions to be the next things to be opened back up.
"We have every intention of not cancelling the 2020 Astley Cup at this time."
The next option for the schools, in the case of this term not being viable, is shifting the event to term three.
That raises a new issue of the competition affecting year 12 students during one of the most critical times of the year - their trial HSC exams.
However, there is a window which would allow less impact on the senior competitors.
"We've tagged the possibility of moving it to term three. You don't want to upset year 12's last year of school, in term three, week 10 and trial HSC exams normally finish around week six," Barwick said.
