Or do they? NSW health minister Brad Hazzard revealed he's yet to speak with the NRL about the game being allowed to resume.

In fact he hasn't spoken to the NRL at all for a month. Not since he last met with NRL chief executive Todd Greenberg and ARL Commission chairman Peter V'landys.

NSW Deputy Premier John Barilaro has backed the NRL's return though, stating the game was the "tonic" Australia needed to get through the coronavirus pandemic.

But Hazzard, when asked about the NRL's plans, revealed on Friday he hadn't been consulted.

"The NRL came to see me about a month or five weeks ago and there's been no further discussions so I can't really comment at this stage," he said.

"If the NRL want to go ahead I'm happy to have the chat and make sure with the medical advice whether it's appropriate.

"There's a balance to be struck here. Whether this is the right balance, I'm happy to talk to the NRL because as health minister I also know we need to have a sense of balance about our life, a sense of mental health.

"I know a lot of people enjoy seeing sport so we can have that conversation with them.

"As long as there's health advice it would be acceptable. If there's not health advice, at this stage I can't comment."

The NRL had announced on Thursday they wanted to return to the field in seven weeks' time.

The constantly changing landscape was the reason they didn't want to finalise anything just yet.

They want to give the players a four-week training block to prepare, so the NRL still have three weeks to iron out the details.

During that time government restrictions due to the coronavirus could change markedly.

While no details of the competition have been finalised, the NRL are leaning away from the two-conference proposal with a 15-round competition - where every team plays each other once - the most likely.

Along with the starting date, Project Apollo, which includes Canberra Raiders chief executive Don Furner, also decided the State of Origin series would be held in the usual three-game format and the the NRL grand final would be a single game.

A three-game deciding series had been mooted as a possibility.

"I'm pleased to announce we're planning a competition start on May 28," ARL commissioner Wayne Pearce said.

"The details on the competition structure, we haven't got to that yet because the landscape is changing very, very quickly around government boundaries. That will feed into the complexity of the structure.

"Today what we landed on was a starting date. We discussed possible competition structures, but we haven't finalised what that looks like yet.

"Why we wanted to firm up a date is to give certainty to players and their training schedules, clubs and the thousands or people who are out of work throughout the clubs and millions of fans of the game.

"It's a mark for everybody to work towards that's associated with the game."

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Pearce said they didn't want to lock in a competition structure just yet because of the rapidly evolving COVID-19 landscape.

He pointed to the fact just a couple of days ago his Project Apollo group was looking at a bubble model - where all the players would go into lockdown at a centralised location - as the most likely scenario.

But an improving landscape in terms of decreasing infection rates has seen that not necessary just yet.

Pearce said the preferred model though was to a more normal structure, ruling out the two-conference scenario.

He said the NSW government had given them the go ahead for teams to start training together in the future.

It's unclear whether the ACT government would allow the same relaxations for the Raiders - although they could simply travel across the border and return to their roots to train at Seiffert Oval instead.

The NRL is working with the New Zealand, Queensland and Victorian governments to fit in with their restrictions, which will be reassessed at the end of April.

Pearce said it was important that whatever model they came up with allowed all clubs to get the same amount of time training together.

"Because we're talking seven weeks away the landscape's changing significantly," he said.

"If we go back a matter of only a few days it was looking like we would have to go into an isolation bubble.

"The rate of infection has come right down and that's been an asset in terms of us being able to get up and playing again as soon as possible.

"We were leaning towards a competition structure that looks more aligned with what we've currently got. So [we're] not going to the conference scenario at the moment.

"We've currently got support from the NSW government if we adhere to public health guidelines and we make sure our players follow those guidelines.

"We are able to train and play provided we have strict measures around testing of players and put some other protocols in place that allows us to minimise the risk of infection within the player group and the community."