Same for me, I am a Souths supporter not an NRL supporter.
Ditto , when Souths were kicked out , I cancelled Foxtell ( resumed when Souths were resubmitted) , stopped buying Telegraph ( still stopped) and did not bother watching NRL those years .
However , I do believe the NRL future , with Souths there , needs a
Perth , Adelaide and Darwin team and perhaps a PNG team or Fiji team ( that is lowest priority) to make the game a truly national game . Another Melbourne team , another QLD team , or Gosford teamer another NZ team Arte all possible future candidates to get to a 24 team comp.
A promotion/ relegation system would be ideal if there were at least 24 teams to make two divisions . This would allow the perfect HOME and AWAY competition , season of 22 games , with 12 teams in each division. The problem with this idea is that if you had ONE Melbourne team ( or Perth or Adelaide or Brisbane or Cowboys or Canberra or NZ team ) you could not expect to relegate one of these teams to a second division and keep the National interest!!!!!! So whilst it may sound a good long term objective to aim for , I do not think it would work. So more teams means we get further away from a true home/away competition.
So , perhaps objective is to go for a 24 team competition , with HOME and AWAY a target over two years. Each team plays the other team ONCE in a year. 23 rounds. Until we get to 24 teams , just expand on what we are doing now with rule that teams take turn playing home/away over seasons. If souths play Roosters 1 year at home , the next time they play Roosters ( be it this year or next) it is away.the other objective is that each year half of a teams games are home games.