After much deliberation following the announcement from the state government that Victoria would enter seven-day snap lockdown from midnight Thursday, the league resolved it would not reschedule any rounds lost between now and finals.

The league announced in May it would play a shortened season of 16 rounds due to the COVID-forced layoff from the fourth lockdown, which suspended play for three weeks.

If lockdown is lifted by Friday next week, the competition will resume from round 13 with Tallangatta to host Kiewa-Sandy Creek, Beechworth to face Mitta United, Chiltern to take on Dederang-Mount Beauty, Thurgoona to clash with Barnawartha, Wahgunyah to meet Wodonga Saints and Yackandandah to square off with Rutherglen.

The finals series is scheduled to start on August 21.

League operations manager Gavin Rendell said the decision stemmed back to the league's pre-season COVID policy of completing at least 11 rounds for the season to be legitimate.

"That was our trigger point to say, regardless of what happens after that (round 11), we will play finals and thankfully we achieved that last weekend," Rendell said.

"This week's round will be cancelled and the same with next week if it turns out that way.

"As part of the changes for the fourth lockdown and losing the two rounds, we made a lot of effort to even up the home and away games for each club so they were even again.

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"Rounds nine, 10 and 11 had rescheduled games and clubs had to move functions and things they had planned.

"The league executive were very conscious of not putting the clubs through that again. Some of the feedback we got at the time was there was a lot of disruption.

"The decision was really around trying to minimise the impact on the clubs for the rest of the season."

Rendell admitted it took time to contact the relevant parties and reach the ultimate decision.

"It's not always easy to get everyone (on the executive) together because everyone works, so it was about talking to them and each of the clubs and getting it out to them," Rendell said.

"In our deliberations in the pre-season, the clubs unanimously agreed playing each other once was the absolute minimum we needed to do and now we've done that we'll take a different approach.

"We'll pick up at round 13 and if we lose next weekend, it will be round 14.

"When we're scheduled to play finals, that's when we'll go into finals."

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