Preperation for Competitive Matches

When governmental PST measures have been relaxed sufficiently to allow full contact training, a specified period of both conditioning and team practice needs to have been completed to ensure that players are sufficiently conditioned for competitive play.

  1. This is at the discretion of individual Clubs but agreement between Union, Clubs, competitions, coaching and conditioning staff, players and player representative bodies is strongly recommended.
  2. The duration of PST measure enforcement will, in turn, have a direct bearing on the nature and duration of this period. The period of training is likely to be a modified version of a regular pre-season.
  3. Under normal circumstances the pre-season conditioning period culminates in ‘warm-up’ games.
  4. This will likely require reduction in further PST measures – specifically; expansion of permitted public gatherings to 250 or less, permitted non-essential travel between cities and counties.
  5. Typically, this would be local teams playing one another with strict limitations on number of non-playing and match day staff.