GROUP 11 secretary Ross McDermott will wait on further clarification before getting too excited about reports of up to eight NRL matches being played in country areas each season.
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Reports emerged from metropolitan media yesterday the NRL would be taking games to regional areas in both New South Wales and Queensland from 2018 as part of the new television deal.
Dubbo was mentioned as one possible host as the game looks to provide for regional areas to make up for the expected scrapping of the City-Country Origin fixture.
"It would be nice next year not in three years' time but I hope it eventuates," McDermott said.
McDermott said he hasn't sought any official details yet but was keen to get some definitive answers rather than having "little pieces leaked" each day.
Confusion has surrounded the state of rugby league in the country in recent days following conflicting statements on the future of City-Country and conjecture over how much of the $925 million from the new deal would make it's way into bush footy.
Despite the huge amount of positives in potentially having NRL matches regularly played in the bush, McDermott still admitted he was disappointed by the binning of City-Country.
Close to 10,000 people attended the match at Dubbo in 2014 and McDermott said that did wonders for the game here.
"Getting NRL players here to play and getting involved in the community, Trent Barrett and Laurie Daley and Brad Fittler, they were all fantastic," he said.
"It was on the way up and people saw it as vital."
As well as Dubbo, Bathurst, Mudgee, Wagga, Tamworth, Coffs Harbour and Albury are just some of the centres which will no doubt be throwing their hat in the ring to host NRL matches.
"There's certain criteria each time but I'm sure our Caltex Park would be in the top few," McDermott said.
"So I'd hope we get a match every two years but you do need to share it around but Dubbo is a bit of a hub for western NSW."
On top of NRL matches possibly being played at Dubbo, McDermott revealed a pair of clubs are interested in bringing some of their rising stars west of the mountains.
This also follows reports teams from country NSW could be involved in a second tier competition such as the NSW Cup, another big plus for the game in regional areas.
"Since last year both Manly and Penrith have said they want to bring their 16s and 18s out for games in the bush, here and Bathurst, so that's showing the interest is there for bringing teams out and will be good for our young guys to see that," McDermott said, before speaking about the possibility of country teams featuring in lower grade competitions.
"That's what was originally planned but Shane Richardson stopped that because he was still working on the schedule but we had the Rams and Riverina taking part in the SG Ball and Harold Matthews Cup for about 10 weeks but that's put on hold for now."
