Season to start later
Coast competition to wait for Games finish
RUGBY league on the Gold Coast is set for a delayed start to the 2018 season but players are being assured they will not be short-changed on value for money.
The Commonwealth Games’ presence on the Gold Coast from April 4-15 will impact upon the running of local sports, with access to facilities being at a premium during that window.
As a result, it is expected the Gold Coast Rugby League season will not kick off until late April.
GCRL manager Scott Dunshea was tight-lipped on an exact date for Round 1 given that clubs are yet to be informed but confirmed that it would likely be around late April.
“It’s not fully ratified yet but that is what we are looking at, just with the impact of the Games – it’s not only the two-week period of the Games being on,” he said.
“We’re still waiting on getting concrete information from the council and from GOLDOC to give us an idea of where that’s at.
“So yeah we sort of have pencilled in a later start.”
But Dunshea declared that start date – compared to April 9 this year – will not translate to a shorter season, nor a later than usual grand final weekend. The 2017 decider was played on September 17, with Burleigh pipping Runaway Bay 20-12.
“It still won’t affect the amount of rounds for the senior season,” Dunshea said.
“We had a spare weekend this year and a rep weekend – they won’t be spare (now).
“We will actually be playing on those weekends so we will still get the amount of rounds in as what we had this year. It will just be a little bit more condensed, that’s all.”
As reported by the Bulletin yesterday, Doug Lipp Cup reserve grade premiers Beaudesert are considering applying for a promotion into the 2018 A-grade competition.