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Well, it’s State of Origin time again, and that inevitably means certain debates are going to come up.
This year, the main debate has been about whether it should be shared, but the other standout that comes every year is when the greatest contest in the world should be played.
One of the biggest debates about Origin that comes around each year is whether it should remain on a Wednesday night, or move to a stand-alone weekend.
Those for an Origin weekend claim that player welfare demands it, and that the Origin period results in poorer quality in the domestic NRL competition, as most of the big name stars are unavailable.
This has a flow-on effect to crowd numbers and thus the clubs’ bottom line.
Those against a stand-alone weekend complain about the lack of football coverage over the weekend with only one game, and how this, in effect, gives the AFL a free kick in that weekend, apart from Origin night.
So is there a way to please everyone? Can we create a ‘Representative Weekend of Rugby League’ that has multiple games to satisfy the fans, while also taking into consideration player welfare?
I believe we can, and here’s how to do it. It just requires a bit of thinking outside the box.
My first proposal would be to make city-country a three-game series, and have it as a ‘reserve grade’ Origin of sorts.
It would still be played in country areas of NSW. But having it as the level below Origin also allows those that are in the ‘Blues-in-waiting’ squad to get more representative experience, thus better preparing them for Origin when they are called up to that level.
It would also give more meaning to the clash, rather than the poor ‘it’s an Origin trial’ excuse that they send out each year.
Secondly, I would create a QLD version of city-country, and play that in areas such as Cairns, Mackay and Central Queensland, where they don’t get NRL games.
The ‘City’ team would comprise of those that came through the ranks in south-east Queensland (Brisbane, Gold Coast, Sunshine Coast, Ipswich, and maybe Toowoomba), while the ‘Country’ team would consist of those from Regional Queensland.
Some of the players that might qualify for this include Matt Bowen, Ashley Graham, Dallas Johnson, Ben Barba, Daly Cherry-Evans and so on.
The talent is there to create a very entertaining game of football.
There has also been talk of taking Origin to New Zealand. Well I would propose that they create their own Origin series, as has been discussed before in many fan forums as well as the NZRL.
The proposal before has been an Auckland v The Rest game. While NZ Origin will never have the same level of excitement as SoO (very few contests in the world have that level of intensity), I still think it would be viable and would aid the development of Rugby League in New Zealand.
So there we have four ‘big ticket’ games on the weekend.
I would play the two city-country games on Friday. The QLD game @ 7.30 pm, NSW @ 9.30 pm in QLD and vice-versa for NSW, while in the non-heartland states, it could alternate each year.
State of Origin would be played on Saturday night, while New Zealand Origin would be on Sunday afternoon.
If we wanted more games (for pay TV maybe), we could also look at international development and have games between the Pacific Island nations such as Fiji, Samoa, Tonga and PNG.
If we wanted to go all out, we could even declare those three weekends domestic-free weekends worldwide, and have games involving countries like England and France as well.
Maybe in the future, when we have stars coming out of the non-heartland states, there could even be an Australia A team comprised of the non-heartland states that plays these countries, but that is a decision for another day.
So it is possible to please everyone with regards to having State of Origin on a weekend. We just need to look at how we can put on more games.
Would a weekend like this work?
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