It has to happen.

Then, with any luck, we're crowning champion sides at the end of August, rather than in September ... or, at the current rate, not at all.

With the ever-changing - and that change is happening rapidly - COVID-19 situation across NSW, it's almost inevitable we'll see some level of impact on sporting competitions in this region.

And that impact is going to come at the worst possible time of the season, too.

Most major sporting competitions across the region are rounding out their final rounds of the regular season. Some premiership races have wrapped up completely.

But others, like our two major rugby league competitions in the west, are a couple of weeks away from the post-season. The WPL, too, is yet to start its big games.

And the question that needs to be asked at this point in time is this: can we wait for finals?

Right now, in this COVID-climate, the simple answer is no.

Finals time is the best time of the year. It's why teams get to work each November, and slave through pre-seasons before trials, then weeks upon weeks of competition.

Being crowned at the end of all that is why we follow sport so keenly. We know what players, what teams go through over the course of a season. Whoever is crowned deserves the title. And that's never been more true than 2021 - our second crack at a COVID-competition, for many sports.

We've already endured one lockdown, and certainly no one wants to see any further complications due to the Delta strain that's completely crippled Sydney, and now looks to be leaking into the regions.

But there's a real sense of inevitability about it all.

As mentioned, we've already been impacted. The Greater Sydney bubble burst in July. We had that exposure at the Blayney Nestle factory, and then the ensuring risk of community transmission meant the communities of Orange, Blayney and Cabonne were placed into a lockdown.

All sporting competitions in this region took a week off and we were lucky enough that no new cases of COVID-19 emerged as a result of that scare.

But when we went through that lockdown, the daily case numbers for NSW were around the 100-per-day mark.

The situation now is worse. Much worse.

On Saturday there was over 300 cases recorded - then a daily record for the entire pandemic. That number dipped a bit on Sunday, but 262 is still high. There were 283 cases recorded on Monday. Then on Tuesday, another record, with cases passing 350.

And, importantly, the number of people infectious in the community isn't dropping, which has been a concern for NSW Health officials for a long time.

Sure, none of those cases have been recorded in the Central West, but there's still a real concern there's active cases in our backyard going undetected.

We've had fragments of the virus detected in Molong, Mudgee and Dubbo in the last 10 days.

Western NSW Local Health District chief executive Scott McLachlan has continuously told us throughout the last month we're not out of the woods.

If that is the case, it would be negligent of sporting bodies in the region to not have some form of plan moving forward if the situation got worse, quickly.

We're seeing this exact scenario play out in northern NSW right now.

The New England region was in a similar position to us last week, when fragments of the virus were detected in the city of Armidale's sewage system.

They now have three cases of community transmission in Armidale, and a positive case that visited Tamworth from Newcastle has thrown that area into a seven-day lockdown too.

Group 4 has been postponed, and other sports in the area are in a similar boat. They're playing the waiting game. How long they have to wait for, though, is anyone's guess.

And it's why we just can't wait.

We've already said it once, but it's worth another mention: the COVID landscape shifts so quickly.

At this point in time, the Central West and all of the towns and cities in our region that have teams participating in major competitions are all in the clear. Let's get on with it.

Let's kick off the business end of the season now to ensure, at the very least, we get to see one.

Sporting bodies, and the volunteers that run them in the Central West, must be commended for the way they handled the first lockdown of its kind in regional NSW in mid-July.

In fact, the way they've all navigated the pandemic in its entirety, all 18 months of it, is to be applauded.

Each and every competition has moved swiftly to inform clubs, officials and the media of their decisions in regards to postponed or cancelled rounds due to the recent lockdown, and it was the same case in 2020.

And now's the time to be just as decisive again.

There's no point in playing another couple of competition rounds if in two weeks time we can't have finals.

The NSWRL pulled the pin on all major competitions in Sydney on Tuesday. Do we want to be in the same boat in three weeks time, after teams and volunteers have worked tirelessly throughout 2021 to put competitions on in the first place?

As it stands, the Blowes Clothing Cup finals series is set to wrap up on August 28 - all competitions, at a regional and local level, in Orange and surrounding areas should be aiming for the same date.

We simply can't wait for the middle of September.

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