These teams are already state champions.
It doesn't matter what some dunce at the NRL is trying to market it as. It's wrong.
If the dumb merkins hadn't essesntially scrapped the ARL brand as part of their efforts to homogenise the sport into the NRL they could have called it the ARL championship game.
I like to think of it like this....
Each of these teams (Penrith and Norths??) arent just representing their fans, they are representing their entire division. Theyve proved that they are the best team in their State, now they are trying to prove that their State League is the best in the country (digging into the State-vs-State parochialism that RL is famous for).
Short term they will probably begin to add teams from Victoria/SA/WA/NZ/Pacific Islands/ect. to the QLD Cup and NSW Cup.
Eventually (if the interest is there) id like to see them divided the States up further (NSW, QLD, Vic/WA/SA/Tas, NZ, Pacific Islands = 5 different state groups.) Begin the season with local games, then find the top 3 or 4 teams from that group for the year and put them into a combined finals series.
This would bring back that community feel of amature and semi-professional team brands that NRL has totally lost. It would have the nice combination of community oriented football and the opportunity to represent your town and your State League on Gand Final day.
How good would it be to see a country NSW/QLD team paying off against a suburban Melbourne/Perth/Adelaide team on national TV. I think this is the way to develop the game in VFL territory and create team brand with the local feel. Rather than just plopping a brand new NRL team there (can do that as well) you develop local club brands in the same way NSWRL did 1908-1980.
