MID West are ready to start going through the requests of clubs to see which players from Group 10 will be eligible to make the move to the region's second tier rugby league competition, less than 10 days away from kick-off.
Subscribe now for unlimited access.
$0/
(min cost $0)
or signup to continue reading
As reported on Tuesday, Mid West have already indicated they would like to restrict requests to local players where possible, and they only want to allow transfers that won't upset the balance of the competition.
It comes after the recent news that regular Woodbridge Cup side Cargo would be allowed to field a team in the 2020 season, which gets underway on July 18.
Group 10 president Linore Zamparini said the committee are going through a three-step process with each player: Receiving requests from Mid West clubs for a transfer, seeking a clearance from that player's current club to make the move and then assessing whether that player is eligible to take the field in the region's lower-tier competition.
What defines that eligibility isn't exactly clear but Zamparini said representative football will detract from a player's case, while locality will be a boost.
"Mid West clubs will send us through their roster and we'll go back to our lists on PlayNRL to assess their registration and see how many games they've played," he said.
"Then the next question will be what clubs they're coming from and whether the clubs will release them. It's about both the want by clubs in Mid West and the request for a clearance from the clubs they're with now.
"We'll then go through and say 'That guy can go. He's only played two games' or 'That guy can't because he's played Western Division'. We've got to rate them and qualify them."
The major concern from Zamparini is leaving the Mid West competition in a healthy state in 2021.
He believes every individual case needs careful consideration because it could have long term effects.
"The Mid West competition is a competition that we need in this region," he said.
"The experienced first graders won't want to go the every club, they'll pick and choose, and we don't want to hurt the competition so that it doesn't perform or regroup after this year."
Zamparini hasn't come up with a strict date he'd like to see the process completed by but he hopes to see it done as soon as possible.
"Once the teams get the roster to us it can go to our registrar and secretary and if there's any sticking points they can approach the clubs and talk to them and we'll qualify them from there," he said.
"We're not talking a lot of players here, maybe only around 15. Once we get it all together it's something we could almost do overnight.
"The questions we need to ask are 'Why do they want these players?' and 'Are they going to sit players on the sideline who had been training with the team before COVID kicked in?'.
"We want to foster and promote rugby league, but not at the expense of someone who is not up to that standard and then he's gone from the game."