The town with an unfair advantage for Farmer Wants a Wife

Like a hot cross bun on the shelf in January, publicity material has emerged for the well-known wifing tournament which also finished filming in that month.

In case you were hiding under a heaving pile of cane toads last year, this is the show where Wollongong export Olivia swept a farmer off his feet from the word go.

Wollongong's success in television husbandry is well known. Put one of ours in the final four and you know whose finger is going home with a ring on it.

So is it time the producers gave the rest of the country a chance? Just to keep it interesting. Is our unfair advantage just not fair?

Channel Seven has revealed the farmers for the 14th season of a show that has produced a remarkable amount of marriage and babies.

There's plenty of love to go round this time, with five blokes ready to be the "prize" (funny, wonder what happened to the other three listed in the application process).

One of the five, Queensland pineapple and dragonfruit grower Bert, has the eyes and smile for a Bush Bachelor of the Year. He probably grows spiky fruit because it was the only way to stop suitors hiding out in his crops. The others ... well, it doesn't really matter, the ladies don't get a choice.

The wifeys-to-be are yet to be revealed. Will there be any Women of Wollongong (WoWs) in the show? If so, shut the gate. The pineapples have bolted.

It's clear as day an Illawarra FWAW suitor has a serious advantage over her rivals - the place is beautiful and liveable, its people are down-to-earth and friendly.

This taste of real life becomes all too obvious during the "home visits" at the pointy end of the show. While an Illawarra girl has time for a trip up to Sublime Point and a swim at the beach before her beau meets the parents, her Sydney competitors spend their time stuck in traffic in Randwick or wherever. Nothing a farmer hates more.

So Sydney's out. There are country towns with single women, yes siree, but do you think the farmer would be on this show if he hadn't exhausted his options in the bush?

And while Newcastle has beaches and bars, let's face it: it's a couple of train stops short of a city.

That pretty much leaves only the Illawarra.

Farmers are trained to think long-term, so they would be weighing up coupling a visit to the in-laws with a trip to The Farm at Killalea or, let's face it, about 20 great beaches nearby.

We know Wollongong reality show contestants tend to win.

Last year's FWAW winner, Woonona product Olivia Benic, is going strong with her farmer-come-agriculture-related-public-servant Matt, with the two buying a house together and holidaying in Fiji, also together. The house looks good for the long term - or at least the next 99 years given how Canberra's land title system works.

We saw how in the less-serious romance contest The Bachelor, West Wollongong's Laura Byrne took home the prize of Matty "J" Johnson - and the pair have since welcomed two daughters.

And Kanahooka High student Cyrus Villanueva took a slightly different path to love, winning thousands of hearts at once en route to the X-Factor crown in 2015. The book of love has music in it - in fact that's where music comes from, as Peter Gabriel put it.

And do we need to count the number of farm boys who have crossed the Dividing Range to study at UOW, finding the love of their lives at the North Gong on an O-Week pub crawl?

So just as sports angle for parity with handicaps, salary caps and a draft system, it's perhaps time FWAW gives the Illawarra a little handicap in the form of no contestants being invited. For fairness's sake.

Not that this would certainly prevent the WoWs winning - not when they could appear later as "intruders", those who make it through the pineapple patch minefield.

Ask the bouncers at Pepe's whether WoWs take "we're full" as an answer. Or the staff at Levendi's.

Plus, we've seen multiple dating show contestants listed as being from "Sydney" - who turned out to be from the Gong. Laura Byrne was one, as was "Surry Hills" Bachelor-chasing villain Our Jen Hawke (from Albion Park).

The field of female contestants will be revealed soon. We know how Channel Seven likes to advertise new shows as screening "after the tennis" ad infi-bloody-nitum. The Farmer Wants a Wife is said to be screening "after Easter", as if Seven has scored the broadcast rights to The Resurrection.

And just like the star of that show, it's hard to keep a good WoW down.

The Farmer Wants a Wife, like the 2031 AFL Grand Final, will screen after Easter on Channel 7 and 7plus.