20 teams:
1. North Qld
2. Redcliffe
3. Brisbane
4. Gold Coast (and if they go the way of the other GC teams, look at either Western Corridor or CQ to take their spot)
5. Newcastle
6. Central Coast Bears (2 home games a year at NSO)
7. Manly
8. Easts
9. Souths (2 games a year at Redfern, pending upgrades)
10. St George Illawarra
11. Cronulla
12. Canberra
13. Melbourne
14. West Coast Pirates
15. Wests Tigers (3 games a year at Leichardt, more if the ground is upgraded)
16. Canterbury
17. Parramatta
18. Penrith
19. Auckland
20. Wellington
* Every team plays each other at least once, 4 pools of teams who play each other twice in a season, with the pools decided by staggering teams based upon finishing position (e.g Pool 1 has the Minor Premiers, 5th, 10th and 15th, Pool 2 has the Premiers if different from MP's, otherwise GF losers, plus 6th, 11th and 16th etc).
* Origin is condensed to take place over a 2 week period. The NRL competition takes a mid-season break with the NZ squad/ Pacific Island squads taking part in a round-robin comp. Players not taking part in rep footy are all assigned a region in Australia/ NZ and do a promotional tour/ fundraiser tour for bush footy/ coaching clinic. Both Origin squads select 25 players, Game 1 is on Friday night, Game 2 the following Wednesday night and then Game 3 that Sunday evening. To counter the short turnarounds, and added attrition, each side gets 2 more interchanges. It becomes a gamble- does the coach select a player in JT's position and risking an injury, or do they use a fresh player who didn't make the 17? This would take the mind-games and strategy up another level.
All in all, no NRL club gets dudded in the Origin period and there's a fortnight full of rep footy and positive promotion for the game in the bush and emerging areas. Instead of attention being divided between the NRL and rep footy for 6 weeks, we get it all in one hit, a clean break- then back into the regular season.
* Keep the Top 8 as is.
