It’ll never happen but a return of the Under 20s with a few extra standalone sides thrown in would be great. It would require some strong backing from NRL and/or governments but it could really improve the quality and depth of the NRL over time.
Say we have all NRL clubs running their U20s side then add PNG Hunters, Kaiviti Silktails, maybe an Auckland based team with pathways to Tonga & Samoa as well.
The only way the current system can work is if you have split regions of roughly equal distance and population and have it centrally funded by the NRL and have an academy system set up by a few people employed by the NRL at the beginning (somebody like Phil Gould for example). The clubs can run it after a certain period of time (I’d prefer it to be run by a body seperate to the clubs but anyway if this is part of a negotiation to get it approved then so be it) but as part of the process they would have to meet certain criteria (a certain amount of players, players registered in the area)
The problem with the current process is a few things
1. Money - For every club like Penrith or even Melbourne who have the money to run an academy, there is a Newcastle or Gold Coast who have been in the past (thankfully in the past) who haven’t had the money to put any significant funds for junior development. How many players could have been produced in these regions in the past 10-15 years if there were significant monies put into these regions.
2. Inability - Some clubs just don’t have the ability to produce juniors because of the areas that they currently look after or just because they don’t have the proper systems in place. Again, how does this help the production of junior talent for the whole competition having this in place
3. Conflict of interest - Another good example is the Storm and the lack of talent coming from Victoria. People complain about this but why would the Storm not look at an option like Sunshine Coast instead of Melbourne. If they want to continue to be dominant, they are always going to look at an area wherein they can develop talent quicker and at a rate that is less expensive than ploughing money into Melbourne. If you have a body above the club at least investing in development in Victoria then this conflict of interest is removed. It will also make it a lot easier to expand to other regions in WA and SA - they can be given a region in NSW and QLD until such time as those areas are able to produce a lot of home grown talent
Anyway the current system is an absolute mess. The player market is a joke, player managers have way too much power (how many players have broken contracts recently) and players just gravitate to a certain few clubs. It is no coincidence that the clubs who are having the most success just have the most money to invest in development and recruitment (a few notable exceptions otherwise).
If you are not going to have a draft then you need to have something else alongside the salary cap in order to balance out the problems with the cap (make it more transparent, make it harder for certain clubs to just poach players from other clubs). Having an outside body pay for junior development would also remove imbalances with junior development and help produce the most amount of talent for the competition at large