This year's reduced NSW Rugby League format proposed the Newcastle premiers simply progress to meet the Ron Massey Cup winners in Sydney, but just a week after the local decider at McDonald Jones Stadium on September 22.

Maitland, who enjoyed President's Cup success the last two years (2022, 2023) after a COVID-inspired campaign in 2020, voiced concerns at a midweek Newcastle RL meeting.

"We raised the concern of the scheduling," Lantry told the Newcastle Herald.

"Having experienced it the last two years, particularly the one in 2022 when we had to go to Parkes [for a semi] the week after winning the [Newcastle] comp.

"It was awful. We trained maybe once. Lucky we played Forbes and not a real high-quality team, because we would have been running the risk of serious injury.

"Which is not right by your players and you don't want to deny them the opportunity to not enjoy winning what they set out to do from November.

"Everyone sets out to win the Newcastle competition and the state competition is a nice little added bonus, but at the end of the day we didn't want to take that away from them to compete in Sydney seven days later.

"We and all the other clubs, as a majority, supported the fact that it would be abandoned this year."

Newcastle RL clubs voted on Wednesday night.

An official decision about this year's President's Cup has yet to be announced by the relevant governing bodies.

Scheduled semis, also involving champions from Illawarra and Western, both fell over in 2023 and led to a "review" of the competition by NSWRL.