By MARK CASHMAN

The Shute Shield season is far from dead in the water with plans being hatched to move straight into a finals series in order to make most use of any window that Sydney’s COVID-19 lockdown gives over the next couple of months.

One of the radical ideas being explored to give finality to the 2021 season is an eight-team finals series based on the standings when the competition hit the pause button.

The eight-team playoffs series is the one used by the National Rugby League and the Australian Football League and would need four weekends to get a grand final played and Shute Shield champion decided.

The teams in the slot to play in the radical end to the season are: 1. Sydney Uni, 2. Northern Suburbs, 3. Eastern Suburbs, 4. Eastwood, 5. Warringah, 6. Gordon, 7. Randwick and 8. Southern Districts.

The top four teams would get a second chance after Week One of the finals while the teams ranked five through to eight would be involved in knockout games.

Week One would look something like this:

GAME A: Sydney Uni (1) v Eastwood (4)
GAME B: Northern Suburbs (2) v Eastern Suburbs (3)

GAME C: Warringah (5) v Southern Districts (8)
GAME D: Gordon (6) v Randwick (7)

The winners of Game A and Game B would earn themselves the weekend off while the losers from Games C and D would be gone for 2021.

Week Two would then looks something like this:

GAME E: The loser of Game A v winner of Game D
GAME F: The loser of Game B v winner of Game C

Week three thus would see:

GAME G: winner of Game A v Winner of Game F
GAME H: winner of Game B v winner of Game E

Week Four

GAME I: Winner of Game G v winner of Game H

There are a lot of ideas out there about how to get the season done and this seems to be one of the better ones that Rugby News has seen.

“A lot of water needs to go under the bridge before any sort of finality to how the rest of the season looks but the eight team model gives the competition a quick and importantly fair way to finish the year,” Rugby News has been told.

“The teams outside the ones that are in the eight at the moment have little or no chance of forcing their way in so in many ways this is a mini season.”

The critical date for the direction the Shute Shield head is August 16 when the SRU board next meets and then there are the daily numbers that Premier Gladys Berejiklian announces each day at 11am.

IMAGE: ANDREW QUINN / GORDON RUGBY