Hotham's comments come after the Group 11 board and its clubs unanimously banded together to demand all four grades be a part of a western-wide competition next year.

As it stands, only first grade and under 18s play as part of a combined Western competition while reserve grade and league tag play in their own groups.

Questions still linger over a merger of reserve grade and league tag, given that Blayney Bears only field a team in reserve grade while Mudgee Dragons do not have a tag side in action this year.

Hotham believes that a separate women's draw that falls in line with the junior tag competitions is the solution to maintaining interest in the game.

"With league tag we have clubs who don't have sides, while others do, and our Panthers team haven't played for three weeks and by the time they do again it will have been five weeks. They want to keep playing but there's too much of a gap," he said.

"With the other three grades I think we'll be fine as numbers go. The interest for league tag is there, but I believe that it should be run on its own with the junior league tag so the girls can get games every week.

"We started off at the beginning with 16 players at training and now we're getting five to six because it's hard to get down to training when you're not playing.

"I don't think it will be able to keep going long enough in its current state to get our junior girls coming through into the senior team."

On top of that, Hotham said that while he accepts a move for reserve grade into a combined competition is likely, it could prove a challenge for Panthers' player retention.

"It's a tricky one. Reserve grade don't get paid so it will be hard to gauge at the moment how it will go, getting three grades to travel that far," he said.

"This year the under 18s have been going out to play with first grade, which is fine, and we're trying to lock away a lot of those players for next year. We'll just have to see what happens with reserves.

"There's a few blokes playing reserve grade this year because they don't want to travel out to play Group 11 clubs, they're just happy to play in Group 10. If that change happens then they might say they don't want to play at all."

Hotham accepts that the Peter McDonald Premiership has become a necessary step, given the way the game has faltered in smaller communities.

"I'd like to see Group 10 get back to full strength again, with Oberon, Blayney, Workies and Cowra having strong teams, but it's not looking that way. It looks like we have to stay combined with Group 11 to keep the game going out in the bush," he said.

"I've been in rugby league for 38 years now, when I started playing, and I've never seen it as bad as what it is now. I don't think there's enough being put back in to country rugby league to keep it going."

While Hotham said it's difficult to find solutions to that problem he said that the move to combine the senior and junior committees at Panthers has been a big positive to come out of 2022.

"The seniors and the juniors have to work together. We need to bring our juniors through to keep them going again so we can have a strong competition. Without that base we don't have seniors," he said.

"At the beginning of this year we brought our senior and juniors committees together to work as one group.

"We've had our under 18s on pre-contracts for next year to show that we have interest in them and we want to keep them at the club."

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