Newcastle Netball Association are planning a return to Saturday competition from July 25.
NNA president Cheryl Hernando told the Newcastle Herald the decision was made after meeting with member clubs on Tuesday night but competition resumption still remained subject to the Public Health Order due for release on July 1 and council approval.
The association had been working towards a potential July 18 competition start date but had been in a holding pattern until more clarity regarding guidelines was forthcoming.
Ms Hernando said information from Netball NSW on Tuesday afternoon "allowed us to change the tone of the meeting".
"The [NSW government] announcement that was made two weeks ago around the return to sport for the community didn't come with the guidelines, so Netball NSW have been working in the background to show us what those guidelines should like ... we said, based on that, we are able to run a competition," Hernando said.
Concerns over potential limits on venue numbers had been the biggest hurdle for NNA, which runs Saturday competition across 30 courts.
"It will still be a numbers game but not a 500 limit, which is what our problem was," Hernando said.
"There still will be numbers and there still will need to be social distancing, so we still have a lot of work to do to make sure that we don't have 100 people come and watch two games of netball.
"We've said to clubs that spectators will be allowed but we're going to limit it to start with to see how we go and then move forward from there. So, we gave some parameters to clubs on how we think it will look. Now, it's the members' decision as to whether they'd like to opt for a refund or play."
The competition will be run over 10 weeks and NNA has given clubs a two-week time frame to submit teams.
"It may look completely different to what competitions have looked in the past, but they're all happy with that; they just want to get back on the court," Hernando said.
NNA had planned to launch a new tri-level structured series for its top level of competition this season which was aimed to provide a development pathway. The competition was to comprise clubs playing in championship, open and 23 divisions with players able to move between sides. That series will be up for discussion at a meeting on Thursday night.
"One of the parameters around that competition was the sharing of players ... we can't do that under the new rules," Hernando said.
"That competition won't be the same but whether we have enough to run some other kind of competition for that level is what we're going to work through on Thursday.
"We just need to find out who can play and then what we can put together but it won't run as what we had hoped. It's disappointing but we'll just make it bigger and better for next year."
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