Blacks president Ben Emmett said he was relieved the Newcastle Hunter Rugby Union had decided to allow the round four fixture against Lake Macquarie to proceed at Marcellin Park in all grades on Saturday.

But Emmett stressed the matter was not over and as part of its appeal the club would seek to have five competition points docked by the NHRU restored and any fines wiped.

The NHRU said in a statement that: “The board has resolved that the club suspension element of the sanction imposed by the NHRU, in the interests of procedural fairness, be suspended until the matter can be heard at a judiciary hearing to be scheduled as soon as practicable.

“Therefore, the full round four of premier rugby will be played this weekend.”

The Blacks, Merewether-Carlton and Singleton Army had been banned from playing this weekend and docked competition points by the NHRU for fielding unregistered players last weekend.

All three teams are free to play this weekend

Southern Beaches were the sole NHRU Premier club unaffected in any grade by the player registration issue.   

First-grade teams University, Singleton and Lake Macquarie are now on negative competition points as a result of docked points from the games involved.

“It’s not over, we still haven’t got our points back,” Emmett said yesterday.

“All along we have tried to work with the NHRU. We were the ones who identified to the NHRU that we had found an anomaly.

“We had requested assistance to find out what the problem was.

“But instead this is what we’ve met with.

“We’ve gone through the procedure of going through the international transfer process to play Chris Logan, why would we then not actually register the player.

“There is no sense to that. 

“Our argument was can we at least investigate this. 

“We do look forward to working through this with the NHRU.”

Emmett said the breaches were far too widespread not to investigate the possibility of a problem with the registration process.

“As I made note in my submission last night, the anecdotal  evidence is that the new RugbyLink registration system might not be as user friendly as it was hoped it might be,” he said

“Are we dealing with nine recalcitrant clubs or could the potential be that there may be issues with they system of registration.

“That’s where I’m thinking the problem is.”

Emmett said the club was communicating with RugbyLink to step through what had happened. 

“We have taken efforts to register our player, at this stage we are unaware exactly why this may not have proceeded as planned and need to find out,” he said.

The crackdown by the NHRU was in response to concerns unregistered players were being fielded and therefore not insured. 

Mr Emmett said no club in rugby was as aware as the Blacks about the need to have players registered and insured after Dom Punch’s injury last year.

The popular Blacks player suffered spinal injuries when a scrum collapsed in last year’s second grade grand final.

UPDATE: Blacks win fight to play