Maitland Show for 2021 will celebrate resilience

After months of wait-and-see, NSW Health announced last week that country shows would go ahead in 2021, with crowds limited to 5000 at a time.

But for Mr Gleeson, who managed to pull off a show last year 100 days after being appointed to the job - it's one of the few shows in regional NSW to go ahead - and it's nothing he can't handle.

"I've made inquiries and found out that we can apply for an exemption on crowd numbers for the three days of our show - February 19, 20 and 21," he said.

"So I'll be sending that off shortly. Normally our crowd numbers are about 5000 to 6000 on the Friday and Sunday, and about 12,000 on the Saturday.

"Even last year on the back of drought and bushfires, while the number of entries was down, the crowd numbers were still up around that."

It's early days into the planning, but there are a couple of things locked in.

The grand parade, which returned last year after a couple of decades, will definitely be a part of this year's program.

"It was really popular, so that's staying on the Saturday afternoon, " he said.

It will also be the 160th Maitland Show and, while he has some thoughts, he's not giving too much away at this stage. But, he acknowledges he wants to "do something special".

He said in the wake of drought, bushfires, smoke and, in some places floods, the theme for this year's Show would be 'Celebrating a Resilient Community'.

"I can't think of a more significant theme than that, especially after what regional and rural communities have gone through in recent times."

He remains confident of a healthy number of entries in the competition and livestock sections.

"Competition numbers were down but that wasn't surprising with the challenges of last year. But I think they'll be up again this year. As we're one of the bigger country shows, we have the added benefit of being a qualifying show for the Sydney Royal.

"So people try to make the Royal from here, and if they miss out they head to Newcastle to try."

The official opening, usually on the Friday, may be changed to Saturday, although this is still being decided. There will not be a showgirl competition in 2021, with current Showgirl Hayley Johns our representative to the Zone Final.

Mr Gleeson said the Sunday program will be community based "for the family".

And, he said if there was one benefit of COVID-19, it's that perfomers he is contacting have no bookings.

"Normally we're one of maybe a dozen shows on around the state at the time," he said. "Right now everyone I contact is free. It means I'm asking what sort of show do I want for Maitland, rather than who's available."

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