Wooden confirmed he'll have a fifth year leading the Kangaroos but after this year's non-event, there's no risk of getting stale.

"Geez, I'll be keen. Everyone will be keen. I imagine the numbers will be good and everyone will be just itching to get back to footy, hopefully," Wooden said.

"We talked about it during the year and then they asked me (a few weeks ago) and it was a no-brainer. It's something I enjoy, and I enjoy it out here. And this year was a bit of a wasted year."

Wooden said it's hard not to feel a bit flat about 2020 given some promising recruiting had them excited about their premiership prospects before the pandemic hit.

"At the moment people are still up in the air, wondering if it was the right call not to play - only because everyone's keen to play. But we did it as a club and we definitely made the right call as a club," he said.

"The club's disappointed as well because we had a cracking list. I think we would've been up there with the quality of players we had. That's the thing now, will we get them back?"

Wooden will stay in touch with his players this month to try to have recruiting resolved well in advance of next year.

He said if their 2020 list re-commits, they won't be looking for too many others, but knows that changing circumstances mean there's no guarantee their Canberra travellers will be right to go again next year.

"Sometimes players come out of Canberra to get away for a year. Now they've had that break, that might be enough for them to go back to the clubs they were at," he said.

Wooden took Temora to a grand final in his first year (a four-point loss to Marrar), followed by a preliminary final finish in 2018, then a semi-final exit last year.

The Kangaroos are still meeting for a casual training session once a fortnight and will continue to, as long as COVID-19 restrictions allow it, as a way of staying in touch through the hiatus.

North Wagga coach Cayden Winter signed on as coach for two years after the Saints won the flag last year.

Now, his second season will effectively be his first, but the club has been impressed with his leadership in a testing year.

"It has been bizarre. It's hard, we had a good pre-season, then to get shut down when we were so close to playing the first time (a week out from the season) footy goes out of your head a bit," Winter said.

"Then to get told you've got to shut down again just when you're about to play again (in July), it's disappointing but everyone's in the same boat besides the guys playing in the AFL Riverina Championship.

"There's not much you can do about it. It's just one of those years.

"I think it's been great for me to see what goes on. I've enjoyed it... it sort of been a mini-apprenticeship I guess, to learn what's expected and what's going to happen next year."

Winter's approach was that whenever a season looked like going ahead, the Saints focussed 100 per cent on playing, rather than on the speculation and possibilities that it wouldn't.

"We just put the head down, tried to get as fit as we could and get ready for the season. We didn't talk about what could potentially happen that much, we just tried to do the work as best we could," he said.

The Saints did get two games in - a practice match against Wahgunyah during a pre-season camp in March, and another against Mangoplah-Cookardinia United-Eastlakes in early July.

He said assistant coach Ben Alexander's leadership has been superb, along with their crop of established players who have taken on greater responsibility within the group.