The Otago premier schools competition format has been rejigged to squeeze in the games which were postponed last weekend.
Four of the five round four games were postponed due to poor weather.
This left the match committee with the difficult task of finding an available date to play the games.
Otago Secondary Schools Rugby Council chairman Murray Munro said the solution the committee came up with was to reschedule the games for June 24. But that has meant axing a round of games from the top six playoffs.
"We needed to complete the whole first round and not everyone could play a mid-week game," Munro said.
"We have already extended the season by two weeks so we have no room to move at all. So what we’ve done is taken out one round [of the five] in the top six."
The round that has been removed is the one in which the top-ranked side would have played the fourth ranked side, second would have played fifth and third would have played sixth.
Munro said the logic behind removing those fixtures was because they were the games with the most disparity between the sides — the matches most likely to have been won by the form sides.
The match committee has informed the schools and Munro said there had been no complaints.
Last year the top six sides were split into two pools of three, so there is still some wriggle room if another round is lost to poor weather, Munro said.
● Premier club rugby will begin at the earlier time of 2pm next weekend. The Metropolitan Rugby Council match committee has brought forward the start times to partially avoid a clash with the Highlanders game against the Crusaders in Christchurch at 2.35pm on June 3.
Match committee chairman Mike Reggett said the premier games could not be played any earlier due to constraints with the times they could play the other grades.
"Most of the guys that play in the senior grade work in the morning so an earlier start is actually an inconvenience for them," he said.
There could also be difficulty getting referees, and frozen grounds prevented playing the junior grade games too early as well.