In a Facebook post on Sunday morning, Group 4 announced that it had postponed games scheduled for Tamworth and Boggabri on Sunday.

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"The board has not made this decision lightly and hope that the community will see this decision in everyone's best interests," Group 4 said, with its chairman, Terry Psarakis, later telling the Leader that the organisation "will be guided by NSW Health" moving forward.

Psarakis said Group 4 had the option of playing postponed games on a "spare weekend".

"We had no play scheduled on the weekend of the Tigers v Sharks game at Scully Park [August 21-22]," he said in a text. "This has been cancelled so we can use this weekend to play [-] if COVID doesn't interfere."

Group 4 matches were played on Saturday, as the New England Rugby Union suspended all its games and the AFL North West suspended all its senior games and also announced the postponement of the upcoming round.

Saturday marked the first week of the AFL finals, with under-14 and under-17 matches going ahead.

Northern Inland Football matches were also played on Saturday. At the time of writing this, there was no word on whether games would go ahead this weekend.

On Sunday morning, CNRU president Paul King told the Leader that the organisation was "working on that via a Zoom" when asked if matches would go ahead this weekend.

In a subsequent statement, the CNRU said it would attempt to finish Saturday's partially completed round 17, while round 18 would proceed as scheduled ahead of the September 11 grand final day.

It based the decision on the "current conditions as at 10am Sunday ... with no lockdown currently in place in LGAs [local government areas] where our clubs reside".

The CNRU said: "Any clubs with players based in neighbouring LGAs impacted by lockdowns MUST ensure that these players do not participate. Whilst this will undoubtedly affect the lineups of teams, it is crucial to the continuation of the competition.

"Clubs will now have this week to prepare for this, as if those players were unavailable through any other reason (injury, personal, etc)."

Affected clubs, the CNRU continued, "may negotiate with their opponents options to minimise any impacts", including playing on Sunday, August 15, if lockdowns were lifted, or changing venues if necessary.

The CNRU said the remaining fixtures from round 17 would be played on August 21 - originally scheduled as the minor semi-final weekend.

The minor and major semi-finals will now be played at one venue on August 28, "in a Super Saturday format", the CNRU said, adding that games will be held at the club that would have hosted the major semi.

However, the governing body said that if any LGA within the Central North competitions went into lockdown, it would temporarily suspend all competitions.

Measures would then be enacted:

If there were a one-week lockdown, the competitions would be paused, all matches would be delayed a week and grand final day would be September 18.

A two-week lockdown would result in the competitions being delayed a fortnight, with grand final day staged on September 25.

A three-week lockdown would result in the CNRU meeting with clubs to discuss "the best course of action to allow a result in the Central North Premiership to be achieved". "At this stage the competition, if left unchanged, would be getting pushed back towards an October finish date and potentially beyond," the CNRU said.

The only CNRU games played on Saturday were the Red Devils' first and reserve-grade clashes against Narrabri in Gunnedah.

North Tamworth had been scheduled to host Werris Creek and Manilla on Sunday, while Kootingal-Moonbi had been set to travel to Boggabri.

The suspension of codes followed Armidale going into lockdown at 5pm on Saturday after it recorded two COVID cases - its first since April last year - and Sydney recorded a record number of cases.

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