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The bid to allow Origin players to represent other countries appears to have been quietly defeated.
Under a proposal that has been around for a couple of years, the link between representing NSW and Queensland and being eligible for Australia was to be broken.
The thinking was straight-forward – fees of $30,000 per game for State games were allowing Australia to stockpile the likes of Akuila Uate, whose ambitions were blue rather than green and gold.
These players were routinely changing their country of election before every World Cup anyway, so why not let them represent second-tier nations in the intervening years too?
Since then we have had a scare campaign that suggested Origin was about to ‘bring in Islanders’ and that this would somehow change the fabric of the contest.
In fact, it has never been harder for an ‘Islander’ to represent NSW or Queensland. You cannot play for a state unless you lived there before the age of 13. Uate, today, would be locked out.
No-one, and I mean no-one, chooses a second-tier nation over Origin in the first place, so no-one would be ‘brought in’. The rule change would simply allow properly qualified Origin players to represent other countries, aside from England and New Zealand, between World Cups.
And now, it appears, it’s not going to happen.
The process that has so far stalled the decision going through is intrinsically flawed. We have asked cows if beef should be on the menu.
Many of those at the NRL with responsibility for international football are directly involved in the Australian team. The NRL chairman, John Grant, reads out the teams for goodness sake.
How can we leave it to these people to make a call that, while great for rugby league, will undoubtedly hurt Australia’s playing stocks?
They should not even be consulted. The National Rugby League is a competition for players of all nationalities and – as I have written before – there should be a clear delineation between the NRL and the Australian team, in the same way that the NBA does not concern itself with making the USA All Stars more successful.
Let’s make this clear – it’s a call that makes Australia weaker and other countries stronger. So former Australian Test stars who now coach state teams are also probably not the best people to consult.
This is an important issue for our game. Let’s not appoint lunatics as asylum administrators.