Bush footy is bleeding out, and James Maloney might have found the solution

Rugby league has never been short on big ideas, but few men cut to the chase and tell it like it is, just like James Maloney's recent pitch on the Bye Round Podcast to save bush footy.

For years, regional clubs have been running on fumes, with dwindling player numbers, clubs folding, volunteer burnout, competition mergers and walkovers becoming worryingly common. The NRL speaks often about “pathways” and “participation,” but for many country towns, the pathway now leads straight off a cliff.

Maloney, who has never been shy about saying what others tiptoe around, believes the solution isn't another glossy initiative or a round of focus groups. It's people. Specifically, rugby league people, the kind who can walk into a small club, shake every hand, lace up a boot or take a clipboard, and immediately lift the whole community.

His proposal is simple: create a dedicated $1 million annual fund to incentivise retiring NRL players to take up roles in regional clubs.

Not as charity, not as ambassadors, but as actual working coaches or captain-coaches on the ground. The idea is for the NRL to tip in around $30,000 per player, and for the local club to offer something similar through match payments, coaching wages or local employment. In Maloney's words, it's not meant to make anyone rich, just make the move realistic.

And frankly, it makes sense.

When an ex-NRL player arrives in a regional competition, it doesn't just help one team. It lifts the entire league. Kids turn up with excitement. Sponsors start answering phone calls again. Grounds fill. The media pays attention. Rival clubs sharpen up. A single signing can pump oxygen into an entire district.

But beneath the nostalgia and romanticism is a harder truth: bush footy is fighting a numbers game it can't win alone. Many clubs simply can't attract the coaching quality or player depth needed to stay afloat. They want to compete, and they just need someone who knows how to rebuild a footy culture from the ground up.

Maloney knows exactly what that looks like. He's played everywhere from NRL grand finals, footy in France or this year, when he played for his boyhood club, the Ourimbah Wyoming Magpies, and if you've followed his career, you know he values community footy as much as the big stage. He argues that ex-NRL players already possess the toolbox regional clubs desperately need in leadership, professionalism, recruitment pull and the natural “halo effect” that comes with having played at the top level.

More importantly, Maloney's solution is practical. No rule changes. No restructuring of junior comps. No multi-million-dollar marketing campaigns. Just league people doing league things, in the places that need them most.

Critics will argue that $1 million isn't nearly enough to solve the terminal decline in some regions, and they're right. But it's also true that the NRL spends more than that on branding exercises and consultancy reports in a single year. If even 20 retiring players were to take up roles in regional clubs annually, the impact would be seismic. You don't need to fix every problem at once; you just need to stop the bleeding.

And there's another factor that rarely gets discussed: retiring NRL players often struggle with identity, routine, and direction once the stadium lights go off. The transition into “normal life” is notoriously brutal. Pairing them with country clubs solves two problems at once: it gives players purpose, structure and belonging, while giving communities experience, mentorship and profile.

The NRL has long called grassroots footy the “lifeblood of the game.” Well, the lifeblood is thinning. Maloney's idea might be the cheapest, cleanest and most authentic way to thicken it again.

In reality, the only question left is whether the NRL has the appetite to act. Because if bush footy continues losing clubs, juniors and volunteers at its current pace, no amount of glossy participation reports will matter. The game's foundation is not in the high-performance hubs or the metropolitan academies; it's in the towns where footy nights double as social gatherings, and where the game still means community first and competition second.

James Maloney has thrown the NRL a lifeline disguised as a simple idea. It's now up to the league to decide whether it actually wants to save the bush or just keep talking about it.