Should there be no sports allowed for the remainder of the 2020 calendar year, the Varsity Cup board has agreed the season will be declared incomplete.

Following a meeting of the board on Wednesday, tournament organisers reiterated their commitment to work with national government and within the guidelines of the relevant health authorities to ensure the safety of players, staff and spectators.

In a statement, the board said it took note of the possibility that sport may not be able to take place within the university space in the remaining calendar and academic year of 2020.

Should that be the case, the following decisions were taken:

• The 2020 Varsity Cup, Varsity Shield and Varsity Young Guns tournaments will be declared incomplete. There will be no overall winner awarded in any of the competitions and the trophies will remain with the 2019 winners.
• As Madibaz had already achieved an unassailable log points tally on the combined Varsity Shield log of 2019 and 2020, they will be promoted to the Varsity Cup, in line with the current Varsity Cup by-laws which states that ‘The team that ends top of the Varsity Shield Log in 2020, based on the combined log of 2019/2020, will be automatically promoted to the Varsity Cup for the 2021 season’ (by-law 6.1.1).
• There will be no team relegated from the Varsity Cup competition and no promotion/relegation match between the Varsity Cup and Varsity Shield competitions. There will also be no promotion/relegation match between the bottom Varsity Shield team and the USSA contender. Therefore, there will be 10 teams in the Varsity Cup for 2021.
• The university, other than the member universities currently participating in the Varsity Cup and Varsity Shield, who is ranked highest at USSA, at the sole discretion of the USSA executive committee, will be automatically promoted to the Varsity Shield for the 2021 season. This will bring the total number of teams in the Varsity Shield to seven teams.
  The new member university must meet all Varsity Cup MOI stipulations.
• Following the 2021 season, the bottom two teams in the Varsity Cup will be automatically relegated to the Varsity Shield and the bottom team in the Varsity Shield will be automatically relegated. This will bring both competitions to eight teams each for the 2022 season and onwards.
• The Varsity Cup board will hold a special general meeting ahead of the next board meeting to vote in the necessary by-law amendments to allow for the changes that have been agreed to by the board.