Coronavirus might be restricting the match fitness of sportsmen and women throughout the Macleay Valley but it's not stopping football clubs around Kempsey from maintaining their fitness levels.
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Both the Kempsey Saints and Macleay Valley Rangers have set plans for their players to stay fit and healthy if a season was to commence.
Rangers women's coach, Emma Tamblyn, has set up a way to monitor her players progress and keep them active.
"I was trying to find a way to keep my players motivated so I set them a two week challenge," Tamblyn explained.
"The first challenge was very simple - run 10kms over two weeks and the next was they had to come up with a workout and as such had to complete seven different workouts in another two week bracket.
"Currently, they have to run two kilometres and send me their times with that repeated on five occasions and I track their percentage of improvement from each run by listing all data in a spreadsheet."
The Kempsey Saints are also attempting to ensure their players are ready for a potential season start.
Saints President Luke Flanagan says his club is trying to make the best out of the coronavirus situation.
"We're trying to promote self-fitness and workout from home programs to make the most of self isolation," Flanagan said.
"Our fitness coach for our Coastal Premier League side, Sam Mahoney, has sent out some material for our boys to work on during this time to keep their fitness levels up in anticipation for when we get started again."
Whether that season will start is a constant unknown as with other sporting codes in the Macleay Valley.
Commencement dates rely strictly on government guidelines and with the gradual relaxing of these restrictions the potential for community sport to restart is increasing.
Flanagan stated that dates surrounding a future Mid North Coast football competition are yet to be decided.
"Football Mid North Coast are hopeful it will commence but it's still all up in the air," he said.
"I've been invited to participate in a committee to discuss strategies and policies for managing the COVID situation and obviously every club will have to abide by different sets of rules to make sure we're viable and the government can sign off on us playing as soon as possible.
"They have a blueprint of a plan that will best work and want to iron out some areas and get feedback from clubs seeing how they will be able to adapt to those strategies.
"Early to mid July is what we're getting indications of when a season can potentially commence and shortened competitions are expected for junior age groups and then looking at ways to maximise the rounds for coastal and women's league."
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