Northland club rugby postponed to May 2 in line with other sport codes

Northland's rugby grounds, like Kensington Park, will be largely empty until May 2 when club sport is set to restart. Photo / File

Northland club rugby has extended NZ Rugby's postponement of all competitions and the region will now see no rugby played until May 2.

In what looked like the first announcement of its kind across New Zealand's regional rugby centres, the Northland Rugby Union, Council of Unions and Northland Junior Council all agreed yesterday to extend NZ Rugby's blanket postponement from April 18 to May 2.

The Northland announcement also included a strong advisory against all types of training prior to April 13. In NZ Rugby's announcement earlier in the week, non-contact training was allowed until April 13 when full-contact training was set to resume.

As reported by the Northern Advocate this week, the national bodies for football, netball, hockey and league all announced their respective community competitions would be postponed until May 2 to restrict the spread of the Covid-19 coronavirus.

Rugby had been the only major code to set their restart date in April.

Northland's senior men's rugby competitions (premier, north zone and south zone) and the under-18 boys' competition were originally set to start on March 28. Northland's women's rugby competitions don't start until May.

Northland's junior rugby competitions wouldn't start until May, however the Northland Junior Council had sent a message to clubs strongly advising against holding any trainings before April 13.

"The decision was made in the best interests of the safety of our whānau and wider community," Northland Rugby Union chief executive Cameron Bell said.

"We know [the decision] has the potential to not be universally-liked but this Covid-19 is changing so very rapidly and now that we've got a [positive Covid-19 case in Northland], if we expose anyone in our community through rugby, that would be devastating."

It was announced yesterday Northland had its first positive Covid-19 case - a man in his 20s, who arrived in Auckland on Monday from Paris to Abu Dhabi (Etihad flight EY38 on 14 March) to Sydney (Etihad flight EY450) on Virgin Australia flight VA0141.

Regarding the advisory against training, Bell said it was up to clubs to self-manage their players and staff to reduce the coronavirus' spread.

Bell said the decision to push club rugby to May 2 was made collectively by Northland's rugby community and showed how important the sport was to the region.

"At the end of the day, rugby and all the other sports need to be here for our community to grow, that's the reality," he said.

"We've got to make sure that our community and our players are in the best of health so that when we push go, we are ready to go."