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It was the plan all along to change the subject as quickly as possible.
Last night on NRL 360, the producers and hosts Ben Ikin and Paul Kent wanted to talk about last week’s Roar column , the one where I said Origin was OK but not something that got me frothing at the mouth.
I had a metaphor in mind to explain the way I feel – a metaphor I really didn’t want to bring up on television. It was how the difference between Star Trek and Star Wars illustrates how some people care about the ideas behind something, and others just take that thing at face value.
Star Wars is all explosions and action, based in a galaxy far, far away with no further explanation. Star Trek is based on hard science, involving human beings from earth with a date given at the start of each episode.
I’m a Star Trek guy – even if Star Wars is superior as a sheer spectacle. Origin may have the best actors and most amazing stunts but it’s just two Australian states playing each other.
Here’s what I wanted to change the subject to: Josh McGuire played for Samoa two weeks ago. On Wednesday he’s playing for Queensland. And at the end of the year, he’ll go back to playing for Samoa.
That didn’t hurt, did it?
“Because,” I would have said, “that is the only change that was ever being contemplated to qualification rules, despite everyone running scared.
“The change does not open up Origin to anyone new. It just has an impact on who Origin players represent afterwards.”
But I didn’t get around to saying that. I had to go where I didn’t want to – Vulcan and Tatooine.
And as it turns out, that’s just as well because the next morning I received a text from Andrew Hill, the NRL’s general manager of integration and game development.
“Josh needs to change his election to Australia before he plays State of Origin,” was what Andrew said.
Andrew doesn’t want this to be the case, I am sure. He and most other people of influence at the NRL accept that it’s ridiculous Josh McGuire probably sacrificed a World Cup by playing for the country of his mother’s heritage two weeks ago.
It’s ridiculous he has to change his country of election to a nation that has no games this year, just to play for a domestic rep team that already has much tougher qualification rules than Australia.
But it’s just like the transfer system in the NRL – the bigger mess it is, the more ammunition the league has in forcing through the changes it wants.
In the case of players changing clubs, they want a draft. In the case of eligibility rules that keep good players out of the Test arena, they want to untie NSW and Queensland from Australia in eligibility rules.
And I’ll repeat: you cannot play for NSW or Queensland if you did not live in those states before the age of 13. Origin’s integrity is already protected for the next decade or two, until another unforseen trend (like NRL clubs signing six-year-olds) emerges.
We are going to have a new and growing group of NRL players: those eligible for Australia but not NSW and Queensland. They will either be from other stats, or – like Semi Radrada – qualify on residence grounds.
Origin was invented to counter economic migration from Queensland to Sydney of rugby league players. This change counters economic migration from the Pacific and other countries to Australia by rugby league players and their parents. Same principle – prop up the team losing players for financial reasons.
Hopefully when the rules are changed, Josh McGuire’s role as a test case can be recognised – and the alteration can be applied retrospectively so he can play in the 2017 World Cup.