Shute Shield axe highlights why there are not more Kurtley Beales | Bret Harris

The cutting of a club like Penrith re-enforces the game’s image as a game for toffs from affluent areasIn the early 1980s in a lower grade Sydney club game for Eastern Suburbs against Western Suburbs at Woollahra Oval in Rose Bay an Easts forward trod on a Wests player’s hand in a ruck and he let out a four-letter expletive. It prompted an Easts supporter with leather patches on the elbows of his tweed jacket to cry out, “come on chap, you’re not in the western suburbs now you know”.Is that how rugby truly feels about western Sydney? It’s a pertinent question to ask following news that the Syd…