The Roar
The Roar

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We need standalone weekends for the big games

Hayne will turn up in Blue. (AAP Image/Dan Peled)
Expert
4th June, 2014
52
1095 Reads

You’re on a screamer of an annual holiday. It’s non-stop excitement and entertainment. You’re burning the candle at both ends and trying to set fire to the middle of it.

Your credit card is taking a bigger beating than Namibia at a rugby union World Cup.

But, what the hell! Everyone agrees, like they did last year, that this is the best holiday ever, right?

Well, everyone except that one pain-in-the-arse fellow traveller who keeps saying, “Of course we’re having fun, but we’re all going to be a mess when the holiday’s done, when we have to go back to work and pay the bills.”

To make matters worse, that pain in the arse every now and then bleats, “And I know we always have a sensational time doing exactly the same thing every year, but shouldn’t we try something different eventually?”

I am that pain in the arse. And that annual screamer of a holiday is State of Origin.

It’s a wild mid-season ride we all look forward to and every year we revel in what gripping entertainment it delivers. But every year we are also left trying to rationalise the toll it takes on the NRL.

Injuries severely wound the premiership chances of certain clubs. The all-consuming media focus on the Origin series leaves the NRL drifting aimless, disjointed and diluted for several weeks. When players do return to their clubs in dribs and drabs during and after Origin, they are brave and proud but often both physically and mentally drained.

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No argument at all that the standard of Origin football itself is extraordinary. Last Wednesday night’s contest was superb: dramatic, courageous, and as everyone seems to have agreed, brutal.

Brutal alright. It has brutalised the competition for the foreseeable future. Cooper Cronk, Josh Morris and Brett Morris won’t play again in the short term, and who knows what versions of Billy Slater, Cameron Smith, Daly Cherry-Evans and Anthony Watmough we’ll see in the next few months?

Clubs, teammates, season-ticket holders and players who take the Origin stage pay a high price for the mid-season ride. The players called up get paid healthily for their potential damage, but the competition that is the lifeblood of the sport in this country suffers.

And what for? Three big nights of ratings for Channel Nine and three big gates for the Australian Rugby League.

You can argue that the Origin games draw a lot of attention to rugby league. Sure. But Wednesday night, prime time in mid-winter is low-hanging fruit. Around Australia people who don’t normally watch rugby league watch State of Origin because it’s well promoted, it’s mesmerisingly tense and emotional, and some find it a bit of an oddity.

A quick check on Twitter last week showed casual celebrity fans like Carlton AFL star Dale Thomas are pulled in hook, line and sinker.

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But many of these comments also have that ‘Can you believe this crazy stuff?’ tone. Like the observer is talking about wacky, fearless contestants on a Japanese gameshow.

You can make a case that the Origin series puts rugby league on the national stage. When you hear plans announced this week to take Origin back to the MCG next season to bring new fans to the game, it seems quite reasonable.

But is Origin really a promotional vehicle for anything but the narrowest horizons of rugby league?

In reality it’s a contest beat up beyond its real importance between the only two states in Australia that have traditionally bought into rugby league. Given that league in this country now thrives on a supply of players from further afield – like Tonga, Samoa, New Zealand, Fiji, Papua New Guinea, the United Kingdom and elsewhere – it has to be viewed as an odd combination of the inward and the backward looking.

The notion that taking a game to the MCG next year will build interest in rugby league is fanciful. I’ve no doubt they’ll get a huge turnout but it’s like expecting Melbourne Cup-goers will start showing up at Caulfield and Moonee Valley for winter race dates. It’s the occasion that gets them in, not the sport.

Origin does not sell premiership rugby league to casual fans because it’s not the same thing. Remember the rolling of eyes and sniggering when Super League promised to deliver State of Origin-style rugby league every week?

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Not possible, the pundits declared. So why would fans sold on Origin be converts to the NRL, especially if their interest is piqued around Origin time when the NRL is usually at its lowest ebb?

I’m not for a moment suggesting Origin be scrapped. That’s not going to happen and I don’t want it to. But a way has to be found to stop it damaging the NRL, because on the crowded Aussie sports scene we really don’t need to be competing with ourselves.

I’d like to see State of Origin condensed over three consecutive, NRL-free weekends, with each state selecting a 30-man squad and going at it hammer and tongs for that brief period.

While the NRL is on break, a knockout cup competition could be conducted, with country sides from NSW and Queensland and representative sides from non-traditional league states given a path to qualification to compete against the NRL feeder clubs.

Scrap City versus Country in NSW, and give real country sides a shot at a cup competition. NRL clubs could have the option of sending back as many top-tier players to their feeder clubs as they want. This would give the chance to fringe first-graders, bench players and players returning from injury.

This competition would give broadcasters some content over the three weeks of Origin. I know it’s not NRL, but what we’re seeing in eight or more Origin-affected weeks of the season is not really NRL either.

At least a cup competition would be an effort towards broadening the horizons of the game, and the knockout format of cup football always produces its own romance and drama. Then, somewhere along the line, maybe we can breathe fresh life into international rugby league.

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Every time I mention this I get the same responses: “Who cares?”, “It’s beyond help”, and “There’s no real competition for Australia in international rugby league”.

In reply, I like to point out that we could’ve said that after decades of NSW dominance in the old interstate series. We could’ve thrown our hands in the air and said it’s outlived its usefulness. But we didn’t.

Solutions were sought, imagination brought to bear and State of Origin was born.

Time to go back to that sort of creative thinking, and start working on evolution as well as Origin.

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