Instead the club will concentrate on its under-age prospects from under-18s down and look to enter a women's team in a proposed Rugby 10s competition.

Blacks president Pat Howard said the commitment from the senior playing group was not where it needed to be to proceed with teams in the Rams Cup.

"In the end the logistics of us competing in the competition wasn't viable," Howard said.

"We will be focusing very heavily on our under-18s and other junior teams, getting behind them and our women's team when they have formatted the planned 10s comp the NHRU are proposing.

"The only thing that is certain at the moment is the uncertainty of everything. We wanted to make a hard and fast decision that was better for our future growth, so we decided against senior teams and concentrating on the under-18s and women's."

Any senior players wanting a game will be able to play with Blacks affiliate clubs the Pokolbin Reds and Gloucester Cockatoos without clearances.

Pokolbin will be running a team in the divisional section of the Rams Cup, a 10-round competition with finals, which starts on July 25.

"As we are affiliated with Pokolbin and Gloucester our players can go and play with those two clubs," Howard said.

"Players registration goes across automatically if they want to play with either of those teams."

Howard said any registrations already paid by Blacks players for this year would automatically transfer across to the 2021 season.

Maitland Junior Rugby Union is also back up and running with training starting from this Wednesday and a 10-round competition to also start on July 25.

Registrations for players are still open for the upcoming season.

Covid protocols for taking part are on the Maitland Junior Rugby Union Facebook page and training schedules are as follows for junior teams:

Do you know you can subscribe to get full access to all Maitland Mercury stories? Subscribing supports us in our local news coverage. To subscribe, click here.