While there's been positive news that will come as some relief to the Dubbo and District Football Association, there's still no official word on when senior teams can expect to play their season this year.
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Association Secretary Manager Jim Auld said the recent news that juniors will be able to play from the start of June was good, but teams won't actually return to play for another month.
"We've got plans to recommence on the first Saturday in July, which I believe is the third of July or thereabouts, that's our current plan," Auld said.
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The Association made the decision to keep the start back from the officially allowed date in order to give the juniors a 'run in'.
"We got the approval from the department of sport to go back on the first Saturday of July for all the junior sport, so we've got about three or four weeks for the kids to do a bit of training and get ready," Auld said.
"We want them to have that run in, it's the same with all sports, you can't just go into it cold, you have to do a bit of preparation for it and a bit of training."
How that will factor into the proposed senior return is unknown at this stage, but the DDFA isn't showing any signs of concern yet.
"We're not worried, the indications are that the seniors could possibly get approval to recommence hopefully the week after the juniors, that's what we're estimating at the moment and what we're working on," Auld said.
"If we do that, that date gives us a window where at the minimum there'll be ten rounds of competition, with the possibility of us being able to stay on the fields through until the end of September and if that happens we could get a twelve round competition in."
Such a competition could even include the Western Premier League, the long anticipated, region-wide battle that had a return this year derailed by COVID-19.
"That would also include the WPL and some of the other areas like Bathurst and Orange, they may be able to continue utilising fields through to the month of October, which would be very useful."
For the time being, however, DDFA is focused on the safe return of the juniors.