THEY'D "love to have a definitive answer", but at this stage Premier League Hockey officials say they are unable to offer any certainty as to how the rest of this season's finals series will unfold.
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Premier League Hockey's plan to stage their preliminary finals this Saturday and the premiership deciders a week later were thrown into turmoil on Tuesday when NSW Health imposed a stay-at-home order for the Orange, Cabonne and Blayney areas.
It meant that the women's preliminary final between Orange United and Orange CYMS could not go ahead in Orange, while the situation also meant the men's match between Parkes and St Pat's was off the cards for Saturday.
"The problem we have with Parkes is that they played in Orange last weekend, so they have to follow that stay-at-home order," PLH vice-president Nicole Riley explained.
"Playing this weekend wasn't an option for them, Bathurst Association has said no to any games. They had an Orange side play in Bathurst on Monday night, so the centre has to be deep cleaned and is closed."
In an attempt to find a workable solution for the remaining fixtures, PLH officials, representatives from Hockey NSW and club delegates attended a zoom meeting on Thursday night.
One of the options presented was to cancel the preliminary finals and the teams which placed highest in the minor premiership - St Pat's in the men's and Orange United in the women's - advance to join the Lithgow Storm and Lithgow Panthers outfits who have already qualified in the grand final.
"That isn't ideal, I would like too see the preliminary finals played. I feel for CYMS because they legitimately beat Pat's and I feel that they should have the opportunity to play for that second spot," Riley said.
"St Pat's and Parkes in the men's, they are keen to play too."
While there was discussion of pushing back the grand final date from July 31, Riley said this too was not an ideal scenario and one PLH wants to avoid.
"We don't want to be pushing it back indefinitely, there are already people who have planned things around the end of season date. The further you push it back the harder it becomes, how long can you go between planned games before you say you don't play a grand final?," she said.
"For my mind you can't be putting your body through a grand final if you've had a long period off."
In order to give all games the best possible chance to being played, it was decided PLH officials and delegates will reconvene on Monday and "see if anything is any clearer then".
"Our hope is that next week Orange is out of lockdown and our [preliminary finalist] teams can play mid-week ahead of the grand final, which would be played on the Saturday," Riley said.
"We are adapting to the NSW Health rules every week and while we'd love to have a definitive answer, we can't do that at this stage.
"We just don't know what will happen, the lockdown could be extended ... duty of care is the committee's responsibility, the safety of players, coaches, managers, spectators is the paramount concern."
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