"Poor bastard has to drive," he explained. "Can't drink." Paradoxically, some of the biggest reunions occur at clubs whose existence has been marginalised, while the meetings of ex-players from clubs with the brightest futures can fester with bitterness. Parramatta have, arguably, the most prosperous future of any Sydney NRL club. They will have a brand new stadium near a thriving leagues club, situated in Sydney's second CBD and are now run by a stable administration. Yet the politics of the past have rent rancour among their four premiership teams of the 1980s.

Ditto Canterbury, who won the same number of grand finals in the same decade, where hostility harbours among its two most famous playing families, the Hughes/Moores and the Mortimers. The Bulldogs, whose wealth rivals the Eels, have their avaricious eyes on Campbelltown which was Wests territory from 1987 until the joint venture with Balmain cemented the NRL franchise at Concord. Now, after 17 years, Wests are reclaiming Campbelltown. The biggest cheer at the Chinatown lunch last Friday came when Wests Tigers board member Mick Liubinskas announced the joint venture's state cup team would play in a black and white jumper and be called Wests Magpies. Balmain, with only one-quarter share, is resigned to the joint venture's sole feeder team in the Intrust Super Premiership being badged Magpies.

Home-grown life member and former player Brett Hodgson will coach the team. The Wests Magpies State Cup team will play several home games at Campbelltown Sports Stadium, including Wests Tigers NRL game days at the venue. The Macarthur region boasts one of the richest veins of rugby league talent in the world and has been progressively mined by rival clubs. Campbelltown Council recognises this and has allocated resources to build a Centre of Excellence at the stadium. The nearby Wests Leagues, a club once owned by the Wests Ashfield licensed club and a former share holder in the joint venture, may be wooed back to the nest.

Ex-players who live or work in the Macarthur region believe its people will never embrace Wests Tigers until the entire club moves westward. However, with the administration based at Concord and nearby Wests Ashfield being the major benefactor, it seems Wests Tigers will be headquartered in the inner west for some time. Furthermore, with plans to rebuild ANZ stadium, more games are likely headed for Leichhardt. The risk is that the Wests Magpies State Cup team will be perceived as tokenism by the people of the outer west. Fibros can sniff tokenism quicker than Silvertails can dispense it. But if the passion of two former Wests players, general manager Leo Epifania and Liubinskas, is any guide, the Magpies will win the west. Epifania says: "I've been in this job since 2004 and back then Wests Tigers would come out to Campbelltown for a week, think they were keeping them happy and then go back to Concord."

He calls it the "slingshot effect," saying, "They'd go out there and then come flying back to Concord." His office is now in the Whitlam Centre at Liverpool and each day as he passed the Victa motor mower factory at Moorebank, imagined the brand back on the Wests jumper. Finally, he walked in the door of the factory and walked out with a modest sponsorship which will appear on the backs of the Intrust jumpers next season. "Victa, Wests and the Magpies are in the Macarthur region to stay," Epifania declared. The Sloth, whose inquiring mind once sent him to Taronga Park to see what his namesake looked like, agrees.

However, given his charitable disposition, he would prefer a more poetic declaration. Loading He once lived near the Lake District of Cumbria while representing in the last Other Nationalities team to play against England and identifies with the poet William Wordsworth who strolled paths nearby. "Sloth" would agree Wordsworth's words – "Stepping westward seemed to be/A kind of heavenly destiny" – apply to the Magpies move to Macarthur.