Alert Level 2. It will be a 10-week competition, with all games played at one venue and no crowds allowed.
But the situation for community netball has yet to be decided.
“Yes, the Level 2 guidelines were certainly a little different from what we had expected, but we are still waiting for netball-specific guidelines to come from Netball New Zealand,” Gisborne Netball Centre manager Allisa Hall said.
“We hope to get those guidelines early next week.”
Sport gatherings of up to 100 people a field or court — not including players, officials or support staff — will be permitted under Alert Level 2.
Sporting organisations must, however, have a system to record contact details of all people involved or attending — for contact-tracing purposes in case of a Covid-19 outbreak.
The gathering restrictions of no more than 100 would limit what the netball centre could deliver at the courts, Hall said.
“We need to wait for further information on Monday, then look at our planning again,” she said.
In a survey of Gisborne players and coaches, more than 70 percent indicated they wanted to play competition netball this season.
“It’s nice to know we’re a little bit closer to being able to start back up.”
A lot of considerations still had to be taken into account in terms of sanitation, contact-tracing and the number of people at the venue, Hall said.
“While this news is exciting, we’re not quite there yet.
“Once Level 2 begins, we will still need to allow teams time to start training and getting prepared, to avoid spikes in injuries from players jumping back out on court too soon.
“Realistically, we are still quite a few weeks away from any games.”
Local netball administrators would probably have a better idea of when play could start following midweek meetings of the Gisborne centre’s Netball New Zealand group and Gisborne’s zone group.
In terms of the new-look ANZ Premiership, Netball NZ chief executive Jennie Wyllie said NNZ was trying to understand what a training bubble looked like and what a playing bubble looked like.
The same would apply to community netball.
“But in terms of the actual premiership competition, the way that we’re seeing it is, after the athletes have four weeks to prepare we would look to bring them into a single location on a weekend-play basis — all together in one venue and run a 10-week competition once we’re up and running,” Wyllie said.
“We’re mindful that there is still a lot that needs to be worked through and so we’re cognisant that we need to keep everyone safe when we do this.”
A four-week timeframe for the restart of the premiership season has been looked at, with dates to be set once the move to Level 2 is confirmed.
