The Farah Palmer Cup has been rescheduled to kick off on Saturday, 5 September with a revised draw, New Zealand Rugby confirmed on Wednesday.
The Auckland-based North pool of the women's domestic competition was to begin Saturday August 22, but fell victim to the COVID-19 lockdown.
The new draw pushes the competition start-date out two weeks, but still allows for teams to complete a full schedule of matches, with the final to be played on the last weekend of October.
NZ Rugby’s head of women’s rugby Cate Sexton says that while it's pleasing to have an updated draw confirmed so teams could adjust preparations, she stressed it's still dependent on Government announcements on COVID-19 alert levels.
"A number of options were presented to provincial unions and they worked collaboratively and promptly to agree on this outcome," Sexton says.
"This gives our teams some certainty in the preparations over the next few weeks and, depending on what happens with alert levels, we hope the Auckland-based teams will be able to train together again soon."
North Harbour, Auckland and Counties Manukau are currently unable to train under COVID-19 level 3 restrictions, which are in place through to at least 26 August.
NZR is continuing to work with the unions on specific protocols and restrictions to ensure the competition can go ahead if some regions are in level 2.
The North Pool will now kick off with Waikato hosting Northland, Counties Manukau and North Harbour doing battle in Pukekohe and Auckland traveling south to Taranaki.
The South Pool will kick off the following weekend.