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Would it be that hard to change the scheduling of the representative season and play the State of Origin series first, followed by the Test between Australia and New Zealand?
And, at the same time, stop pretending the City-Country game is something that it’s not and make it an under-23s game, for the best young talent available?
It is just plain wrong to be playing the Test ahead of Origin and it really is ridiculous that this order of things has been allowed to continue for so long.
It is disrespectful to the Test match concept to make it the first game of the representative season as opposed to the last.
Consider this reverse scenario.
Origin I could be going ahead this Wednesday, May 11, at ANZ Stadium, instead of the scheduled date of June 1.
That would be followed by Origin II on June 1 at Suncorp Stadium (scheduled date June 22) and Origin III back at ANZ on June 22 (scheduled date July 13).
Then, the representative round, as it is called, could be played on the weekend of Friday, July 15, to Sunday, July 17.
My preference would be for the City-Country game to be played on the Friday, the PNG-Fiji and Samoa-Tonga games on the Saturday and the Aussies-Kiwis Test on the Sunday afternoon.
But whatever the scheduling of that weekend, the main point would be to turn the dates around so that the Test comes at the end and the Origin series serves as a genuine selection pointer to it.
No-one can say the players aren’t ready to play Origin now, a month earlier than scheduled. If they’re ready to play Test football then they’re ready to play Origin.
What is the actual purpose of the mid-season Test? It is not a genuine Anzac Test anymore, because it is played almost two weeks after Anzac Day. The accent is on club football on Anzac Day now.
What does a one-off Test like this mean? To give it true meaning, it should be played after the Origin series, so that selection can be seen as a reward for outstanding performances in the interstate arena.
That’s what NSW-Queensland games, going back to pre-Origin days, were – virtual selection trials for the Test team.
And City-Country was played before the Blues-Maroons games as a selection trial for those clashes.
The City-Country concept always seems to be on its last legs, but somehow manages to keep going. The latest version, in Tamworth on Sunday, was weakened by many pre-match withdrawals, mainly to the City team, yet they came out and won, 44-30.
Good luck to them, and there were some fine individual performances, but how can you properly rate those performances in terms of Origin readiness when there are a number of NRL mid-range and inexperienced players playing in that game?
If you want to keep City-Country alive, make it an under-23s game that is a stepping stone to something bigger, down the track.
And enforce some hard-and-fast rules where the selected players must attend an official team medical, like they used to have to, rather than this ridiculous situation we have where some players are withdrawn by clubs acting in self-interest.
City-Country can continue to have a life if the organisers get real about what the game should actually represent. Otherwise, it has run its race.
If the Test was played after Origin, then the game would regain the respect it deserves.
Even in the weeks leading up to the Test that was played on Friday, there was more talk about Origin and possible NSW players in contentious positions, like the halves and fullback, than there was about the Test.
Put the Test in its right place on the calendar and let it achieve true meaning again.
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