{"id":6390,"date":"2021-08-24T09:35:14","date_gmt":"2021-08-23T21:35:14","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wp\/?p=6390"},"modified":"2025-03-03T22:46:41","modified_gmt":"2025-03-03T09:46:41","slug":"all-rugby-postponed-or-cancelled-this-weekend-following-latest-covid-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/2021\/08\/24\/all-rugby-postponed-or-cancelled-this-weekend-following-latest-covid-update\/","title":{"rendered":"All rugby postponed or cancelled this weekend, following latest COVID update\u00a0"},"content":{"rendered":"

All rugby postponed or cancelled this weekend, following latest COVID update\u00a0<\/strong><\/span><\/p>\n

Bunnings Warehouse NPC, Farah Palmer Cup (FPC) and Heartland Championship matches, as well as all community and school rugby this weekend has once again, been cancelled or postponed\u00a0due to COVID-19 restrictions, New Zealand Rugby (NZR) has announced.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The New Zealand Schools Rugby Union (NZSRU) has also made the difficult decision to cancel the\u00a0Barbarians\u00a0National Secondary School Championships Top 4 tournament, which has fallen victim to COVID-19 related disruptions for the\u00a0second consecutive year.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Government announced on Monday that Auckland will remain at Alert Level 4 for a period of seven days, until\u00a011.59PM\u00a0Tuesday 31\u00a0August, while the rest of New Zealand will be at Alert Level 4 for a period of three days until 11.59PM Friday 27 August.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

NZR General Manager Community Rugby Steve Lancaster said cancelling all rugby across the country this weekend was the only responsible option.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cIt\u2019s disappointing once again to have to keep our participants on the side-lines, but it\u2019s the right thing to do under the circumstances.\u00a0\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cAlthough some parts of the country may be\u00a0in a position\u00a0to play on Saturday, teams would not have been able to train\u00a0for two weeks\u00a0which\u00a0potentially\u00a0creates player welfare issues.\u00a0Clubs and schools would not have adequate time from midnight Friday to prepare to host games within government guidelines,\u00a0so we will wait another week and hopefully rugby can play\u00a0it\u2019s\u00a0part in helping the country stamp out this outbreak.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cWe share the disappointment of players, fans and other stakeholders and know it\u2019s especially tough for the secondary schools involved in the Top 4 tournament,\u00a0which provides such a great finale to the first XV season.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The Government plans to review Alert Levels on Friday 27 August and Lancaster said NZR would wait until then to make any decisions on rescheduling the latest round of Bunnings NPC, FPC and Heartland Championship matches.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

\u201cEveryone wants to be able to play the full schedule and that remains our goal. No decisions have been made, so we will pause and see what the Government says on Friday and make some calls from there.\u201d\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n

The latest delays mean the start of the Bunnings Warehouse Heartland Championship is now two weeks behind schedule, while the Bunnings NPC has competed two rounds, and the FPC presented by Bunnings\u00a0\u00a0six and seven rounds in the Championship and Premiership divisions respectively.\u00a0<\/span><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

All rugby postponed or cancelled this weekend, following latest COVID update\u00a0 Bunnings Warehouse NPC, Farah Palmer Cup (FPC) and Heartland Championship matches, as well…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":3,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3,7,9],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-6390","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-heartland-championship","category-news","category-west-coast-ru"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6390","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/3"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6390"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6390\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8259,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6390\/revisions\/8259"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6390"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6390"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/westcoastrfu.com\/wsct\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6390"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}