SHOULD the Maryborough-Castlemaine District Football-Netball League season get going this year, it will face the added challenge of how to make a 14-team competition work in a limited timeframe.

Normally, the MCDFNL plays a 16 round home and away season - all teams play each other once over the first 13 rounds, and then three teams a second time over the last three, followed by finals.

This year though senior competitions - should they start - are only going to have a maximum of 13 weekends to get their seasons in given the earliest they can get under way is July 25 and the latest they can go is October 17 as per the agreement struck last month between AFL Victoria and Cricket Victoria to allow football to push beyond September due to its coronavirus delay.

While there has been a spate of community football-netball leagues that have pulled the pin on their seasons in recent weeks, the MCDFNL still has its door open to playing in 2020, with the league to hold its next meeting with clubs on Monday night.

"How we would structure up a season would depend on how many weeks we get at it," league president Steve Broad said on Wednesday.

"Normally, we would need 13 rounds for everyone to play each other once, so whether we were to break it into two conferences with some finals after that... we haven't sat down to discuss that yet.

"Maybe once we meet next week though we may find there are some clubs that now think it's not worth doing it and we may only proceed with 10 clubs, so we'll have to look at all those scenarios.

"We certainly want to get something going, but we're still dictated to by the government and so forth."

If there was a full quota of 14 teams, the MCDFNL could potentially run a conference-style season in as little as 10 weeks that could be completed before the end of September:

* have seven teams in each conference;

* each team plays six games with one bye; or the two teams in each conference with the bye that week could meet in a cross-over to get an extra game in;

* top four finals in each conference;

* week 1 finals - 1 v 4 and 2 v 3 in each conference in knockout semi-finals;

* week 2 finals - the two semi-final winners in each conference meet in what's the equivalent of preliminary finals;

* week 3 finals - grand final featuring the two preliminary final winners, which could be September 26 based off a July 25 start.

While the MCDFNL is still hopeful of playing a senior season this year, it's confident it will get get a junior competition started.

The MCDFNL features under-11.5, under-14.5 and under-17.5 junior football and 11-under, 13-under, 15-under and 17-under junior netball.

Sport for 18-and-under can resume full contact training and competition from next Monday, but Broad says the league is awaiting more information on crowds and game-day protocols before being able to lock in any definitive plans.

Results use average scores of 2011, 2013, 2015, 2017 sand 2019 match-ups between teams.

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