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Step into my tent and gaze into my crystal ball: the year is 2030 and the rugby league world has just been set alight by the talents of a young fullback named after his parent’s two favourite Storm players, Billy Cooper.
The previous year Billy had a breakout season which resulted in him being awarded the 2029 Dally M. His ridiculous form has continued into the 2030 season and as the autumn months grow cooler a winter storm is brewing.
The thing is, Billy was born and bred in Melbourne, played all of his junior club and rep footy in Victoria and was signed to the Storm under-20s out of high school.
NRL officials are scratching their heads as to how they can involve Australia’s best number one since Billy Slater in the country’s premier representative competition.
Ok, step out of the smoke and haze and back to 2013. Could such a scenario be on the horizon?
I believe there’s every chance of it and I’m sure that the day it does happen rugby league fans and the NRL will be rejoicing.
As fans of the ‘greatest game of all’, we want as many Australian’s as possible to become as devoted as we are.
For the NRL, more fans mean more money from TV, sponsors and gates. It’ll be wins all round.
Already the NRL is pouring significant amounts of money into areas outside of the games two heartland states with the realisation of further player and fan-bases the motivating factors behind these investments.
If the NRL didn’t have an eye outside the Queensland and New South Wales borders, we wouldn’t have the Storm and Perth wouldn’t be a case of not if but when.
But what does all of this mean for one of the jewels in the games crown?
The AFL’s State of Origin concept has been nowhere near as successful as rugby league’s version.
An obvious contributing issue with this is the fact that AFL is extremely popular in four states and the other two still manage to generate a reasonable amount of playing talent.
Meanwhile, rugby league’s State of Origin has thrived on the back of a bitter rivalry between the two states that almost exclusively produce all of Australia’s rugby league talent.
I have no doubt that for as long as the NRL continues investing money to the south and the west of the country, the number of participants at the elite level from these areas will grow.
Already there are a growing number of locals playing in the Storm’s under-20s team and Junior Kangaroo, Mahe Fonua became the first Victorian born and bred player to play in the NRL.
It’s not beyond the realms of possibility to suggest that this trend in Victoria will continue and as a Perth based team comes online, I don’t believe Western Australia will be too far behind.
If anything, Billy Cooper could be gracing the NRL a lot sooner than 2030.
So again, the question remains what happens to State of Origin?
As the percentage of non-Queensland and New South Wales talent playing in the NRL grows, do we ignore them until they’re called upon for Kangaroo duties?
Do we add extra states to the competition or create a third combined states team to reboot a certain Super League representative concept (may be New Zealand could also be chucked in there too)?
Do we pack up the concept all together and focus our representative energies on the international scene?
For the record, I believe when we arrive at this point we’re best served by folding the states into two regions.
A northern region that involves players from Queensland, South Australia, Western Australia and the Northern Territory and a southern region made up of players from New South Wales, the ACT, Victoria and Tasmania.
The day will come, it may be 2015, 2020 or beyond Billy’s big year in 2030. The question is, what form will State or Origin take on?
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