The region's premier cricket competition could fire up in less than three weeks.
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Bosses at Cricket Albury-Wodonga are working on the basis community sport in NSW will be permitted from October 16 and may play the opening rounds of the provincial competition as T20 matches, all north of the state border.
They're seeking clarification around movement inside the border bubble before locking in a start date.
"At the moment, the NSW guidelines are giving us a 95 percent chance we can start on October 16 and the Victorian guidelines are telling us we'll start somewhere between November 1 and November 14," CAW chairman Michael Erdeljac said.
"District will start when Victorian guidelines fall into place and Hume will start between October 16-23 but as far as our No.1 competition goes, we're waiting to see where we really stand.
"Now the border bubble is open, and you can cross for any reason, we're trying to confirm that if it's OK to train in Victoria, can they play in NSW? If that's the case, we'll probably start on October 16."
Eight of the provincial clubs are based in NSW with the other four in Victoria.
"All of our games will be T20s or one-dayers, that's an option; the other option is to start with T20s and play a second-grade game at 12pm and a first-grade game at 3pm," Erdeljac said.
"That way, you can have both games in the same state and that's probably the option we're looking at.
"If you're inside the border bubble, and you can cross over for anything, we don't have an issue. At the moment, that's what that ruling says.
"We've had issues of COVID cases coming up here but, being fair, most of those cases have been from people coming out of capital cities to the local area.
"The lady in Wodonga came from Melbourne, the man came from Sydney. Most local cases aren't derived from local people."
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Erdeljac will continue to liaise with Cricket Victoria and Cricket NSW, the latter of whom issued a 'return to play' update late last week.
"The state is likely to re-open under restrictions as early as October 11," the statement read.
"Cricket NSW recommends to prepare for a return to training from Monday October 11 and playing from as early as October 16."
As with the winter sports, running a cross-border competition during COVID is proving more challenging than ever.
"It's very hard," Erdeljac admitted. "I'm dealing with Sydney and Melbourne and we cover eight LGAs so it's a logistical nightmare.
"This is a moving beast. They're saying they could be at 70 percent double dose vaccination in regional Victoria by October 15.
"We're in the hands of politicians and government officials, which is fine. As long as they give us a set of guidelines, we'll work to those guidelines to the best of our ability.
"We were the first to play sport last year, in October, and we're hoping we can do the same again this year and start somewhere in October.
"We normally start on October 9, so that's only a week later (if we can launch the season on October 16).
"But we still haven't been able to meet the clubs yet due to the lockdowns on either side of the river."
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