“You can’t have an Australian team linked with Papua New Guinea,” Politis said.

“It’s not going to work. PNG is its own country. For me,it makes sense for the[North Sydney] Bears to merge with Perth. That gives you another market for the TV deal and helps us focus on growing the sport across the nation. Eventually we should get to 20 teams,but Papua New Guinea should come after Perth. They should be patient over the next five to 10 years and spend money on developing players in the Pacific then look at PNG.

One suggestion is a PNG team could be based in Cairns to help attract players and develop an Australian fan base,but Politis believes that is not a good idea.

“You can’t have a team based in Cairns playing out of Port Moresby. Who’s going to want to do that? Guys over the age of 35 only signing for money? If you spend the next five or 10 years developing the players in PNG they’ll be ready for when you bring a team in.”

The NRL schedule has long been a bugbear of Politis,who doesn’t like the way the NRL creates its draw.

“It’s not a draw. Don’t use that word,” he said. “A draw doesn’t exist. We have a TV schedule. V’landys needs to fix it. We get back to playing a proper draw,not all over the place like it is now. That’s fairness.

“Now the top clubs play each other twice and the bottom teams play each other twice and we end up somewhere in the middle and get a close comp. Everyone says we’re geniuses,but we’re not. It’s engineered.”

While Politis was critical of the process surrounding the schedule,he sang the praises of the NRL under the leadership of V’landys and Abdo. He says it’s the first time that the clubs have felt like partners in the game.

“It’s the best I’ve seen since I’ve been involved,” the long-serving administrator said. “V’landys was correct;we are the game. We provide the product but before we were going broke because the people in the game had this anti-club attitude. Don’t give them money they’ll just blow it. It’s a major turnaround in thinking brought in by V’landys.”

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