The ongoing saga of the NRL's impending return on May 28 took a twist on Friday and Saturday, with politicians and chief medical officers slamming the bid from Peter V'landys and company.

NSW Health Minister Brad Hazzard and Deputy Chief Medical Officer Paul Kelly both said that the NRL had not been given the green-light to return yet due to the COVID-19 crisis.

And a particular comment from Kelly was interesting, where he claimed that both Wayne Bennett and Ricky Stuart were 'vulnerable' in regards to the coronavirus.

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It prompted a comical response from Stuart - who is only 53 years old - which included a cheeky dig at the Souths supercoach.

“I’m very fortunate that he’s got my welfare in mind," he told Triple M Radio.

"Don’t worry I’ve been copping it in the past 12 hours, particularly by people such as Craig Bellamy who has a good 15 years on me.

"And then I get put into the same category as Wayne Bennett who looks like he’s had coronavirus for the last 20 years."

The structure of the competition when it returns is unknown, and it will be up to the likes of V'landys and 'Project Apollo' boss Wayne Pearce to decide how the season will work.

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But Stuart believes there is no reason to change any rules on the field, and believes that playing every team once is the fairest way to go.

“If you do that, you may as well go ahead to whoever wins the grand final and put an asterisk next too it," he said when asked about rule changes.

"Why do we need to mess around with the fabric of the game? I think we already mess around with it too much as it is, we need to keep this competition as normal as we possibly can for our fans.

"Just get rugby league back on the field, I don’t think we can waste time facilitating trends or making a different type of interpretations.

"There has been talk of playing every team once which I think is the fairest way, I heard Peter V’landys talking about the integrity of the competition. I think playing every team once due to the disruption caused by this virus, that’s the fairest method or concept of structuring a competition.

"Ron Massey had talked about the conference structure for years, and I know he had very in-depth chats with Steve Crawley at Nine and I think it has its merits. But I think it is more for the teams overseas

"We’re not in the NFL, we need to create a structure of competition that bests suits us here in the NRL. We need to look at our own brand and create our own structures, we don’t need to keep copying."