Central North Rugby Union has pretty much "abandoned having a Heath Shield competition" in 2020 but remain confident some form of rugby will be played this year.
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Central North teams could instead play in a hybrid competition alongside New England Rugby teams.
It was just one proposal put forward when Central North officials and club representatives met via video on the weekend to discuss the 2020 season.
CNRU president Tony Byrnes said there was a full representation of clubs at the meeting to discuss the easing of COVID-19 restrictions.
"What we found is that while it was encouraging that some restrictions are being lifted, there's not enough to make any positive decisions about a return," Byrnes said.
"We don't think we'll get any community rugby before August. We surveyed our clubs and the majority wanted rugby finished by October so they could get into cricket and farmers into farming."
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That time frame would rule out a single round season, which has seen other options investigated including the hybrid competition with New England.
However, Byrnes said without more information from the government and guidance from Rugby Australia, it was impossible to know how the 2020 season will look.
"There'd be no awards for coming first, second or third," Byrnes said of the potential joint competition.
"It could be a conference arrangement across the two areas or maybe some gala days. As time goes on we'll be looking to adapt some type of arrangement, we just don't have the information at the moment."
New England Rugby had a meeting on Friday and president David Clifton agreed, saying it was too early to finalise anything.
"We'll meet again in two weeks to see where we're going but until we get on top of it and the government come out and say 'you can do this', we've got no idea [if a season is possible]," Clifton said.
"The other issue for us is the university and the availability of students. It was always going to be an issue for us and those university clubs will be down on players and probably be restricted to one or two teams for each club."
Getting players on the paddock was a priority, as long as it's safe, for CNRU and NERU. And both associations were open to investigating a range of ideas - including gala days and 7s - to get a game of rugby in.
