The Greens announced last week their intention to leave Group Nine to join the border-based Murray Cup.

However Murray Cup president Chris Treffers was caught off guard by the news.

While not ruling the Greens out for 2018, Treffers believes the ideal is still very much a hypothetical.

“It was brought up at a meeting and they discussed options of what they could do and where they’re headed,” Treffers said.

“It was more speculation at their meeting that they were looking at Murray Cup and that was where it was left.”

Currently there are teams from Albury-Wodonga, Wangaratta and Corowa in the competition plus interest from Tumbarumba and Narrandera.

The added travel factor appears to be the major hurdle.

“The Murray Cup is more of a social competition than a highly-competitive competition and we have a certain application process much the same as other competitions would,” Treffers said.

“One thing with ours is we would prefer not to travel more than an hour from Albury-Wodonga.

“A lot of the players in our comp play in it because it’s a local comp and they don’t have to travel that far.

“It would defeat the purpose of having it because if we started having other teams coming in that we have to travel two or three hours away to play, we would start losing our current teams.”

Tumbarumba’s relatively isolated location makes it difficult to explore other options.

Greens president Larry Collins said the club was meeting with Country Rugby League officials to discuss their options on Wednesday.