The Maitland Pickers' bold push to play in an inter regional competition this season is all but complete - it just needs the NSW Rugby League's rubber stamp.
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Club officials hope to be able to make an announcement on the new competition by the end of the week.
At this stage Maitland will be the only Newcastle team in the 10-round Presidents Cup competition, with Cessnock seriously considering the idea before deciding not to proceed.
Surprisingly the cashed-up Western Suburbs Rosellas have shown little interest.
Here's what we know:
Maitland, along with Wentworthville Magpies, Glebe-Burwood Wolves, Hills Bulls and North Sydney Bears are all keen to go. They would normally play in the Ron Massey Cup competition.
A handful of other clubs are in final negotiations. Maitland president Frank Lawler understands the other clubs are from mostly outside Sydney ... "Wollongong, Canberra, that sort of thing".
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The plan is to play five home games and five away games - with the number of teams not finalised, this may mean playing some teams once, and others twice, if there are not 10 teams.
Maitland are holding ongoing talks with BarTV Sports about the possibility of having their matches livestreamed or as pay to view.
At this stage the crowd limit at Maitland Sports Ground, due to social distancing requirements, is 100 which includes players.
"Obviously we're hoping this will ease before the season starts so we can get a home crowd," Mr Lawler said. "If we could get 1000, or even 500, that would be great."
The club will return to training on June 30, with the competition due to start on Saturday, July 18.
As it's all new, I think it will be pretty exciting
- Pickers president Frank Lawler
Training is limited to groups of 20, so the club hopes to have two teams training at once on separate sides of the ground, with training spread across four nights to cater for all teams.
The Pickers will field their second grade side in the first tier Newcastle competition, and their Open grade side in the tier 2 competition. They will also field Under 19s and Ladies League Tag teams.
After a drawn out fight to get junior Pickers teams representing the club, Maitland will also field two Under 16s teams and an Under 17s team in the Newcastle Junior competitions.
"Because they're in different competition, the draws haven't been finalised and it will be difficult to correlate home and away matches," Mr Lawler said. "But the NSW Rugby league have said where possible they'll try to get these matches on as the lead-ups to the first grade.
"Ideally we'd love to play five games at home like we've done in the past.
"It would mean some changes though. Matches would be a half hour apart to allow one team to finish and leave before the others arrive. Players would have a limited warm up before they play and so on.
"There are things to work out but our guys have agreed to significant pay cuts due to the COVID-19 situation, and now we just want to get them on the field so they can play some football.
"But as it's all new, I think it will be pretty exciting."
And if you're wondering how the Newcastle competition compares with the Ron Massey Cup, Pickers' five-eighth Chad O'Donnell has played in both.
"I think the Newcastle competition tends to have more experienced players, whereas Ron Massey Cup has more young players coming through looking to get into the NSW Cup," he said. "Both tough competitions though."
