Celebrating short Origin careers

The FOGs (Former Origin Greats) are regularly wheeled out in the media, and rightly so. But there are a lot of ex-Origin players who aren’t often spoken about.

These blokes only played a few Origin matches for a variety of reasons – form, injuries, suspensions, being out of favour with selectors, or just through the bad luck of having been born in the wrong era, being stuck behind a champion.

With that in mind, I’ve put together two fantasy teams – one from Queensland and one from New South Wales – made up exclusively of former players who got between one and three Origin matches in their careers (i.e. one full series or less).

These are all blokes who I would have loved to see play more at that level.

Regardless of how many Origins they played, they all should be proud of their careers. They are (and will always be) Origin players, it’s a very exclusive club.

Queensland
1. Paul Hauff
2. Joe Kilroy
3. Josh Hannay
4. Shannon Hegarty
5. Adam Mogg
6. Daniel Wagon
7. Nathan Fien
8. Danny Nutley
9. John Doyle
10. John Buttigieg
11. Peter Ryan
12. Brad Meyers
13. Scott Sattler

New South Wales
1. Jonathan Docking
2. Ken Nagas
3. Brett Rodwell
4. Michael Buettner
5. Darren Albert
6. Steve Carter
7. Kevin Hastings
8. Geoff Bugden
9. Luke Priddis
10. Mark Sargent
11. David Brooks
12. Mark Geyer
13. Graeme O’Grady

For Queensland, I could have included Artie Beetson, Rod Reddy and John Lang, who all only played in the first Origin match in 1980, but they each played plenty of representative football prior to that, so I opted for players who didn’t get as much chance at that level.

I didn’t select Tommy Raudonikis and Graham Eadie in my NSW side for the same reason.

Halfback for Queensland was the most difficult spot to fill – I had to search long and hard to find one who played fewer than three games. I ended up with Nathan Fien, who played just the one match in 2001, before switching allegiances to play for the Kiwis.

Mark Geyer is the most surprising inclusion in my Blues side. He’s hardly ‘forgotten’, but it’s amazing that such a physical player, seemingly suited to Origin, played only three matches in his career. Thanks to his famous run-in with Wally Lewis in one of those games, at least he’ll always feature on the Origin highlight reels.

Since 1980, 182 men have played State of Origin for Queensland, and 257 for New South Wales. It’s often said that Queensland ‘pick and stick’ with their players, and to an extent that’s true, but that philosophy most likely came about due to Queensland having a lot less quality in terms of options to choose from in the early days.

In more recent times, Queensland have had plenty of quality selection options, but they’re obviously not going to make too many changes to such a dominant side.

In all, fewer than 50 Queensland players have played three Origin games or fewer, to NSW’s 100.

Which former players would you like to have seen play more Origin games?