I think where we play, where the CoE is, where we train, what is our area etc are secondary things..
We could have the entire Sydney to pick from but we would still turn good players into bad ones the way we are going.
Melb went to a city that has almost never produced an NRL player and were successful there even before the salary cap stuff.
Souths and Roosters basically have no Juniors but are successful.
All this talk about "play here, train there, go to schools here, lobby the Govt here etc" are just distractions from the main issue.
We need a coaching director, a good pathways director and a head of football that can help senior coaches coach junior coaches, senior physios train junior physios, senior trainers train junior trainers etc. We need a proper self functioning system like that.
Where it happens is irrelevant. Once we get a bit of money, we can have scouts in all potential places just like all other Clubs do.
We not shit because we play at Campbo, we are just shit.
What is extremely difficult is how to do this all without $$. Hence, like nomads we just keep moving to different places, appeasing different crowds to ensure our funding doesn't dry up. Ideally, you want your NRL games to be the main attraction for your fans which won't happen unless we are self sufficient with our funding. We are still struggling to find the balance between having an identity of one home ground vs being a mercenary and go wherever we can make money.
Got no idea how we solve these issues, but I'm sure the arguments about the McArthur region are pointless when we don't have anything. We keep thinking that should we be in this area or not but the truth is that neither McArthur nor the Inner West deserves a shithole like us.