Dubbo Basketball Association president Hale Gordon isn't shy about how tough the last year's been for the sport.
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The various competitions the association participates in were some of the hardest hit by COVID-19, with few games, if any, happening across the region.
While the conditions still aren't right for the Dubbo representative teams to return this year, Hale says things are trending in the right direction overall.
"We're solid as an association," Gordon said.
"We've got parameters to deal with as things go forward, locally we'll be playing, that's all fine, but everything else in terms of representing Dubbo is up in the air."
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The Western Junior League will be one competition that will allow Dubbo representatives to compete across the region, with lockdowns in Sydney unlikely to affect the rural sides looking to play.
However, the same won't be true of the State League teams, where the Rams usually feature as the senior Dubbo men and women side in the regional competition.
"We've decided not to have State League teams this year, there's a couple of reasons for that," Gordon said.
"One major factor is the COVID uncertainty, putting in all that effort to get started and then having it cancelled."
Another thorn in the side of the senior team's return this year is the lack of an ability to bring in import players from across the globe.
In previous seasons north American representatives like Canadian Rob Dewar and Americans Charles Baines and Faatimah A were mainstays across the two sides, but the current global situation makes similar hires impossible this year.
"The import component is of course the other challenging aspect, it's extremely expensive to put someone up for accommodation for the fourteen days and extremely risky in the case of something going wrong COVID-wise," Gordon said.
"That could have big effects on the competition, or even if the competition shuts down for other reasons, we'd have that person here and we'd still have to pay them without any games."
While the men's senior side played in a few trials in the lead up to a possible season, the decision was ultimately made to postpone their return.
"It's a very big ask, there's a lot of travel and it's far away and it's all very costly," Gordon said.
While the senior representative sides won't feature this year, the local and junior competition will be even further bolstered by the support of Raine and Horne, who've once again chosen to sponsor the association and ensured that all junior singlets will be provided.
"They've been very generous sponsors to us over the last few years, they've been able to provide singlets for all our junior participants," Gordon said.
While the real estate venture are the major sponsor, Western Plains Granite have also chipped in to help out as a supporter.
A registration day will happen this Friday at 4pm at Sports World, with the local junior competition starting on February 12.
