RIVERINA women's tackle coach Andrew Hinchcliffe is hopeful enough interest will be generate for Group Nine to push for a local competition to be established as soon as the end of this year.
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It was hoped open and under-17 competitions would be established last year, but the initiative was postponed after insufficient registrations were received in February.
The Country Championships overlapping with the planned five-week competition was a factor, and Hinchcliffe said some extra time to assess the situation could be beneficial.
The Riverina won the inaugural women's country championships title in 2019, and continued their preparations for this year's campaign with a training run at Charles Sturt University on Saturday.
"There's growing interest in ladies tackle and as a group we're hoping there'll be an established competition going forward, especially going into the country championships where we're coming up against other regions who have one," Hinchcliffe said.
"That's definitely an advantage for them, we're looking for a pathway for these girls and hopefully there'll be something in place in the next couple of years.
"I think everyone may start to happen on the back end of this year. From a Group Nine perspective we didn't quite have the numbers there, but with a bit more time to promote hopefully that makes a bit of a difference this time around."
Hinchcliffe was happy with the increase in numbers at Saturday's training run, with the side to take on Macarthur Wests Tigers at Camden on Sunday, February 28 and Shellharbour on Sunday, March 7.
"We had about seven new faces there on the weekend, we're building up slowly and we're hoping that ramps up over the next couple of weeks before we finalise the squad," he said.
"We probably haven't got to the contact stage, we've been doing a lot of the basics and some generic coaching style stuff to really enforce that, which is important from a team perspective."
Riverina may be without a handful of their best players through other commitments, with speedster Tess Staines an established star after representing NSW under-18s in 2019, while Young's Chloe Muggleton and Wagga's Shanae Pope have been included in the Canberra Raiders' under-18 Tarsha Gale Cup squad.
"A few girls have got other commitments through the Canberra system. It's good to see because that's what it's all about, but it might knock our strength around there," Hinchcliffe said.
The men's and women's Country Championships will return to an open-age format this year.
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