CSU is calling on Central West Rugby Union officials to do them some favours when considering what kind of format the draw for the 2020 New Holland Cup will take.
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Without those favours, CSU vice-president Daniel Adamson fears the students will not be able to commit to a competition should it go ahead.
Rugby Australia recently announced it would target a July return to community rugby competitions such as those run under the Central West banner.
The issue for CSU is that if the competition resumes then, they will struggle to find players given the university will be conducting lessons online rather than on campus.
"The thing is the university has already announced it is going online for session two, so that's July, and obviously almost our entire team is uni students," Adamson explained.
"We put out a call to the guys who had gone home and there wasn't a lot of keen response for people to come back and play. They've got nothing in Bathurst to do, they've got nowhere to stay.
"If we were to go back and play in July we would at best field a women's and a men's side, we'd really, really struggle to field a second grade side.
"Now that a lot of guys have gone back to Sydney of whatever, they are not going to commute back every weekend. They might do it once or twice, but we can't really expect them to do it every week.
"So it's going to be pretty touch if we do go back in July and I know that's what they are saying."
Prior to the outbreak of the coronavirus, CSU was planning for a big year.
With 2020 marking their 50th season, and the first XV the New Holland Cup defending champions, CSU had attracted strong numbers of both male and female players to pre-season training.
Though there are still students who are keen to return to the training paddock, the changes the university has made in response to the pandemic has impacted those numbers.
"One of the training sessions, men's and women's, we had close to 80-90 people, we had a lot of people. We had enough for two men's teams for sure, we had about 50 or 60 men there and the rest were the girls," Adamson said.
"We've had a good chat about going back to training and there are people keen to run around, but there's not enough numbers to have two men's teams.
"We can't do much about it - so we're sending a call out to the other people around town, if they want to come play rugby, come and play for CSU.
"I think they [CWRU] need to keep us in their thoughts and try and help us out in some way to get some more people try and play for us."
Clubs were consulted last week and it seems the most likely format for the New Holland Cup would be 10 games then finals. But Adamson hopes in CSU's case, any matches would not be contested too far away from Bathurst.
It's a call out to look after us a little bit because it's dire straights at the moment.
- Daniel Adamson
"Like I'd hope that they don't say round one, travel to Narromine four hours. We wouldn't even have a coach coming with us, no-one will drive three hours from Sydney to here then another four hours - that's a seven-hour trip - and then go home again on Sunday," he said.
"We'd like to think the furthest we'd have to travel is, I wouldn't even say Dubbo, perhaps Mudgee.
"I'm sure Matt Tink has got something up his sleeve, he always really looks after us. But it's a call out to look after us a little bit because it's dire straights at the moment."
Asked if CSU would consider withdrawing from the competition entirely, Adamson said that is not the intent of his club.
They are keen to help a season to go ahead if permitted, even if a title defence is unlikely without a full squad to draw upon.
"We're not going to say this season means nothing," he said.
"We did win the competition last year and we'd love to win it again, but for us to have the best shot at defending our title, we need everyone, we need that to have a good shake of the sauce bottle.
"We don't want to pull out, we wouldn't want to do that to the comp ... with all this sort of isolation stuff people are biting their nails wanting to do something.
"Those blokes at Narromine and Dubbo who weren't affected as bad by this virus, they are probably just itching to do something and play some football, so we want to give them the opportunity to play a full season.
"So we will try out absolute best to field a firsts and women's, just to give a shot at the comp going ahead.
"What it comes down to is a bunch of blokes, and girls, in the Central West who just want to play footy and they'll do anything to make that happen."
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