The open age feeder system that has been allowed to develop is a real mess. It's a mixture of things, with some clubs doing one thing and other clubs doing another. I say "allowed to develop" because clearly there was no real plan or structure in place for creating player development pathways. It just evolved this way, and it needs fixing.
I can't believe some people are saying that NSW has a better comp than the Qld Cup. The Qld Cup is clearly superior, as shown by NSW clubs mostly putting their feeder teams into that comp (at great cost). This is probably good for the standard of the Qld Cup, but it's a bad thing overall. It means that the NSW Cup just gets worse and worse. It's also bad for the players, I know there are talented players who can't be bothered with the back and forth between a feeder club in Qld and the NRL club in NSW and so give the game away.
I don't think a return to reserve grade is the answer though. Reserve grade isn't going to bring any additional fans into the game. Some diehards will watch all 3 grades, but there isn't this widespread call for it. In addition, it would really damage the stature of the open age comps that are always going to exist, especially harming the traditional clubs (Newtown, Norths, etc).
Equally a national second division type setup like that proposed by The Observer isn't going to work either. You'd still have the player welfare issues, and you'd be adding greatly increased costs in terms of travel and stuff. You'd have similar running costs to the NRL but only a tiny fraction of the revenue.
There's a few different things we need to do:
- offer clear pathways for player development
- improve player welfare and keep players playing the game
- offer a high quality, high profile outlet for traditional brands
- build on the success of the Qld Cup
- fix up the situation in NSW
I think we can do all this, and more besides. And we wouldn't even really need to change what we already do that much. We need a system kind of like AAA baseball in the US, but tailored to the situation of RL in Australia. Keep the Qld Cup pretty much as it is, and bring the NSW Cup up to a higher standard.
We need to make having a feeder team in a NSW competition a condition of having an NRL licence is for NSW clubs.
Even though they would be a feeder team, We need to have standalone brands. This would attract a wider range of supporters and build better links with local comps and local communities. If you lived in Ryde and weren't a Tigers supporter you would have more of a connection with Ryde-Eastwood Hawks than with the Balmain-Ryde Tigers.
Each of the 11 NSW clubs + the Warriors would have a feeder relationship with a nearby non-NRL club, or create their own feeder club with a separate brand. For example, St George Illwarra should play in Wollongong and use the Illawarra Steelers brand for their feeder club, or the Warriors use the Auckland Vulcans or Auckland Lions brand. The Raiders could have Queanbeyan United as their feeder team playing out of Seiffert Oval.
As RL1908 says, they should be joined by non-NSW clubs looking to press their claims for NRL membership - eg WA Reds. Similarly, in the medium term we should look to have PNG re-enter the Qld Cup, and longer term look to have NT enter as well.
NSW doesn't just mean Sydney,so I also think we should seriously look into creating regional teams to play in the NSW Cup. For example we could have a Riverina team based out of Wagga and also playing games in Albury, Griffith etc and a Western Division team playing out of Orange, Dubbo, Parkes etc. These would be a link between local CRL Group comps (and divisional rep teams) and the big time. You could have double headers, with the local CRL team playing prior to the NSW Cup match. A lot of players may not quite make it in the NRL, so move back home to the country and give the game away. Maintaining a reasonable standard competition would allow them to both stay in their hometown and play good quality RL. Cost and competitiveness is a real factor - regional teams would need to be resourced enough to be competitive. However I think it would be money well spent, as it would greatly boost interest in country rugby league.
So separate NSW and Qld Cups keep costs down and maintain the existing heritage, but we could have some kind of inter-league cup competition, or at the very least a superbowl type game. If theNSW and Qld grand finals were on the Sunday of the weekend prior to the NRL grand final it would work very well. Currently that Sunday arvo has no RL at all, so this is an open timeslot and I think would get pretty good ratings. Then the week later the two winners should play as a curtain raiser to the NRL Grand Final.
