The governing body at the time was made up of delegates of participating clubs who were all jealous and sick to death of the Dragons winning GF after GF. They could have established an extra club anywhere in Australia but decided to dilute the most dominant Club in rugby league history with the establishment of a club right in between the St George District and the Dragons Nursery - Illawarra.
It didn't stop there, the four tackle rule was introduced in order to limit the influence of the huge St George forward pack on the game of rugby league.
Sorry Possm have to disagree with you here IMO the suggestion by journos that these thing happened to hamper St George are journalistic fairy tales.
The NSWRL was under constant pressure in the early 60's to expand the Sydney comp.
Wentworthville and Ryde Eastwood were always pushing for a promotion and relegation system and a combined Newcastle side had been offered up as well.
The Sydney RL clubs especially Parramatta were not going to have a bar of Wenty and Ryde Eastwood eating into their nurseries so they were left on the outer and there was no chance that Sydney were going to have a bar of a combined Newcastle club as they often had high representation in the Country sides and also got to play against touring sides so Sydney clubs were never going to risk them being let in.
Penrith was considered viable as it was little more than hill billy country with a small population nowhere near what it is today and would have to spend years developing a proper junior nursery to even look like being competitive.
They couldn't promote just 1 team and have a bye so with all the other Sydney clubs being severely land locked St George who were drawing from the newly developing shire and the Illawarra had no real southern boundary so were also a viable option to have the expansion of an extra club and as is evidenced with the length of time it took them to get a premiership the theory to let them into the comp with minimal impact proved correct.
In respect of the 4 tackle rule it was first introduced in England by Bill Fallowfield who ran the International RL and we were forced to accept it as the international rule so why would you have a different domestic competition if you wanted to be able to play international football?
If anybody was looking for an advantage it was England not other Sydney clubs.
