Can you elaborate on this??
Ive always thought it a shame that Canberra teams wasnt run by the CRL (if only to give the City vs Country jersey a modern relevence; i love those colours).
ACT players already come under Country anyway, so it wouldn't make any difference to City vs Country. BTW we're proud to come under the Country banner.
What would change the relevance of City vs Country would be to ban ACT born and bred players from playing for NSW, but that will never happen because it's in the NRLs and NSWRLs interests to keep ACT players under the NSW banner and the Queenslanders are to stupid to understand the difference between the ACT and NSW so they haven't made a stink about it yet.
It'd also bring up the pesky point of the possibility of the ACT being able support it's own SOO team which would put a spanner in the works of their cash cow that they're afraid to change.
Having said that though, i dont know much about the relationship between Canberra and the CRL. I know CRL has been great for a lot of other rural NSW areas, what was it that made them so bad for canberra??
Basically for the same reasons that the NSWRL and the CRL are separate entities, the NSWRL couldn't support all of their operations in Sydney and all of the CRLs operations successfully so they had to be two separate organisations to get the best results, the situation between the CRL and the ACT and surrounding regions is basically the same thing,
Basically the CRL isn't in the position to support rugby league in the country and to support it in the ACT so there needs to be a split and a new RL formed, the problem is that for whatever reasons the ARL will not support or fund such a move and that's where the CRRL comes in.
The CRRL (Canberra Region Rugby League) was formed by the Raiders Group and the CRL, the Raiders group provides the majority of the funding, but the CRL provides some as well. They do a pretty good job of organizing the juniors competitions and making sure there're no problems with the seniors as well (apart from the fact that they tend to favor the Blues and always do whats best for the Raiders even when it's not what's best for the kids trying to break into the NRL, BTW this is similar to the types of corruption that governing bodies owning NRL teams would enable).
But because the CRRL aren't recognized as a governing body so they can't make decisions for the region that are in the best interests of the sport whole without the CRLs and Raiders permission and because they're for all intents and purposes owned by the Raiders Group they only do what is in the interests of the Raiders.
Of course the CRL could just stop the CRRL and run RL in the area alone, but if that was to happen they'ed only be willing to give as much funding to the whole of the ACT as they give their other comps to run it's self, which simply isn't enough for RL to be able to compete with the other big sports in the city that would have much, much more funding at their disposal, which inevitably would see the grass roots in and around the ACT reduce enormously, and possibly irreversibly.
So basically RL in the ACT and Southern NSW is for the most part is rudderless, while other sports (particularly Union and Soccer) make advances.
What needs to happen is a new ACTRL (that is as independent of the Raiders Group as possible) needs to be founded and helped funded by the NRL in the short term to govern RL in the ACT and surrounds, but unfortunately I don't think either the NRL or the ARLC see the ACT as important enough to invest the money or time required to change things.
