Club presidents met with the league executive on Thursday night and agreed to set a deadline after weeks of uncertainty.

Lockdown in regional NSW was this week extended to September 10, while restrictions in Victoria will remain in place until Thursday at least.

If possible, the league will play rounds 12, 16, 17 and 18 before moving into a finals series comprising the top eight clubs.

"It was a really good conversation," AWFA president Mark Leman said.

"The clubs wanted to draw a line in the sand because it's really important their players know what the plan is.

"A number of clubs wanted to call it now. There were some clubs who openly said 'look, we're done' and we had one club in particular who said their seniors were done but their juniors were happy to keep going so there's a whole mix of emotions at the moment with different clubs."

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Leman again praised rivals clubs for their willingness to work together and insisted AWFA wouldn't be swayed by what other competitions in the region were doing.

"We don't care what other people do," he said.

"It's really important we stick together and run our association and our sport the best we can for our members.

"I've said to all the clubs and our executive how great the conversations have been.

"It's not been aggressive, it's not been derogatory to anybody, everyone was allowed to have an opinion and we accepted everybody's opinion. It was very professional and very respectful.

"I'm really pleased by the way we're communicating and I also did say 'please reach out to your members because in these tough times with the lockdowns, there might be some people out there struggling and being part of a club is sometimes a good network just to keep an eye on each other.'

"Administrators have been doing it really tough this year.

"Sometimes for players it's just a case of 'turn up and play' but club committees need to be commended for the work they're doing."

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