Nominations have been received by eight clubs for the 2024 season, with only Deniliquin and Hay missing.

After not taking part in the 10s competition last year, Leeton and Albury are both looking to have teams in the new-look format.

Tumut, who did not take part in the 2022, are also working on increasing their numbers.

Southern Inland rugby manager Jack Heffernan believes it is a good sign for the competition.

"It's exciting to have Albury and Leeton back," Heffernan said.

"They have both been working really hard driving the messaging around trying to get some players and also what their club mottos are around the social side of the game.

"Hopefully that attracts players as well and Tumut has been the other one doing a lot of work behind the scenes to try to attract some new players as well."

The growth in girls rugby in the juniors is also having an impact.

"The work the juniors have done since we started tackle there in 2020 is starting to grow into that senior space now," Heffernan said.

"There's a lot of positives and hopefully we will have those eight teams ready to go come round one."

Heffernan hopes having eight teams nominate will remove many of the byes that created a stop-start season in 2023.

After expanding from sevens to 10s in 2019, Southern Inland have sent clubs some guidelines on how the hybrid format will work including changes to scrums with an additional forward while the games length will extend to 25-minute halves.

There is also some more flexibility for teams regarding their player numbers.

If both participating teams have more than 20 players available they will play 15s, with 30-minute halves, while if either team has left than 12 players the game will revert back to 10s, with 20-minute halves.

All finals games will be 12-a-side.

With six forwards and six backs, scrums will have an additional player involved opening options for the number eight to take the ball out as well as place kicking.

Heffernan revealed more work will be done on other rule variations.

"The board will have to go through a process of creating some law variations, as there isn't World Rugby law variations right now," he said.

"We will do that in consultation with the clubs to make sure when the referee blows the whistle come April everyone is on the same page."

Mark Macarthur has returned to the Waratahs coaching role this season.

He feels the changes have been well received by the premiers.

"The numbers are getting there, pre-season is always a good indicator and overall we've probably had 16 different ladies turn up and there's still more doing AFL and touch that are still coming," Macarthur said.

"I think it's a great indicator of what we're trying to do."

Southern Inland's representative team is 15-a-side.

Macarthur has headed up the program and feels expanding the Southern Inland competition will be a big boost.

"There's a few more functions that will allow you to roll over to a 15s side," he said.