Organisers made the difficult decision on Wednesday night to cancel the iconic pre-season knockout for the second consecutive season.

COVID-19 has been cited as the primary reason for the cancellation with officials believing it had a considerable impact on a shortage of team nominations.

Only nine clubs had confirmed their place in this year's knockout and it forced organisers to make the tough call to again cancel this year's event.

West Wyalong Knockout organiser Nicole Wood said it was an incredibly disappointing and difficult decision to make.

"Yeah it was. We talked about it in mid January, looking at the numbers and then all the COVID stuff blew up, we thought at the start of February we'll make the decision because the next few weeks would have been pretty mad, getting everything sorted for it," Wood said.

"So it was pretty difficult but the meeting (Wednesday) night, everyone was on the same page. It's hard, because it's been one of my favourite weekends since I was a kid.

"Fingers crossed we'll bounce back and get some form of normality again."

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Four Group Nine clubs were set to compete in this year's knockout with Brothers, Southcity, Temora and Young all in.

Goulburn, who had claimed the past two knockout titles, were confirmed, as was 2020 runners up Nowra-Bomaderry and Woden Valley. Host club West Wyalong and fellow Group 20 club Leeton made up the nine teams.

Traditionally the knockout goes ahead with 16 clubs. Organisers were open to going ahead with 12 but ultimately pulled the pin.

"We had nine confirmed and two that said they probably will, but unless we had a solid, at least, 12, you wouldn't be game to go ahead because there's always someone that pulls out at the last minute," she said.

"Even the ones that had put their nominations in, when all of this COVID stuff blew up, they said it makes you nervous, you don't want to bring it to West Wyalong. We had Goulburn, Nowra, Woden Valley, and they're coming from places where you think, all of the locals love to go to the footy but there's going to be oldies there."

There were other unfortunate clashes with the knockout on February 25-26 going up against the first round of NSW Rugby League's Country Championships.

As was the case last year, this was going to be the 50^th running of the knockout and Wood vowed the West Wyalong community won't give up.

"We're trying to get it going but bloody COVID keeps ruining it," she said.

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