Otago sporting organisations are not sitting on their hands during the Covid-19 outbreak, and are looking at ways to manage the sporting landscape when sport eventually returns.
What is becoming clear is sport of any kind will be wanted by the community, but it needs to be in a decent working order, and sports will have to be co-ordinated.
Sport Otago business development manager Michael Smith oversaw a meeting, earlier this week, of representatives of nine Otago sporting codes.
He said it was a good positive meeting and looked at what sports could do during the lockdown and then how sports would approach things once it ended.
He said there was talk about what sport would look like after the lockdown and though no-one knew when sport would restart, codes needed to be flexible.
He said the last thing sports needed was to jump over each other in getting back to action.
No one date had been fixed as to when sport would return, and when they did get back might dictate the length of seasons and how they would look.
What appears to be becoming clear is that the focus will be on club sport, getting a representative programme going in any sport will be on the backburner.
That may not be just for this season — but the emphasis would be on getting as many people playing as possible.
He said it may be winter sports would start well into the winter and then head into spring. The club sport season would go for later, and for many sports there would simply not be time for a representative programme.
To get one sport under way and then having others idle was not wanted, and would lead to sport becoming disjointed.
New Zealand Rugby had already announced it was not running representative programmes below Mitre 10 Cup and Farah Palmer Cup level.
All suggestions were on the table and it could lead to some sports playing on different days but sharing the fields.
Whether it was a 12-15 week season which heads well into spring, or a shorter 10-week season, is still going to depend on starting dates and alert levels.
It may be summer sports start later. But everyone had to look at the big picture. The Otago spring lends itself to winter sport being played at that time.
Grounds would also be an issue, as mowing and management was not allowed during the lockdown.
The grounds will take a while to prepare, but football does have an advantage with the newly built turf at Logan Park and indoor sports should be fine.
Smith said the meeting was a good step forward and all the major codes in Otago were working together for the good of sport.
