Unnatural selection: Why aren't representative teams picked on form?

The Australian Rugby League Commission recently announced the Kangaroos line-up for the Test Match against New Zealand in Newcastle on May 6. As with the announcement of every representative squad these days, many of the selections were contentious and sparked a level of social media outrage usually reserved for an episode of Love at First Sight.

Questions arose regarding whether certain members of the team were picked based on name and reputation alone.

Looking through the team, there can be no doubt this is the case.

Greg Inglis has been a magnificent servant to South Sydney, Queensland and Australia, but his form this year leaves him languishing in the dreaded ‘Kurt Mann Zone’.

He will be partnered in the centres by St George Illawarra fullback Josh Dugan, who failed to even cement a spot in the centres for the Dragons, despite their backline possessing less firepower than a damp Catherine Wheel.

And leading the way up front will be mighty Matt Scott, who has been the fourth most effective forward in the North Queensland pack this season.

So why were these guys selected? Because they have been there and done it before. They know what it takes to get the job done at that level. And because coach Mal Meninga knows these boys will give 110 per cent.

Clichés aside, Inglis, Dugan and Scott were selected to represent Australia because of who they are, not how well they are playing. Additionally, the trio had already pre-recorded stirring promotional monologues for the match, and Channel Nine couldn’t raise the scratch to film new ones.

So what’s the purpose of representative football? Does it exist to reward the players for their outstanding form and production, or is it simply a revenue stream for the National Rugby League? Are these games played to honour the participants, or are they staged for the enjoyment of the fans?

If you asked the NRL these questions, they would likely give you a Grandpa Simpson style response – “A little from column A, and a little from column B”. They would love to see representative fixtures such as the Anzac Test feature a myriad of rugby league superstars, each at the top of their game, putting on a show-stopping spectacle that leaves fans gagging for more. The unfortunate reality is that representative football operates more like a corporate old boys club, rewarding a core group of players with continued selection until retirement, incapacity or death.

So if we know the system stinks, how do we fix it? Let’s start by picking our representative teams based on form. Crazy right? How dare I suggest that incumbent players be forced to make way for those who are playing better football? Such senseless, new-world-order thinking should be restricted to the dusty pages of a George Orwell novel, and certainly kept well separated from the valued traditions of rugby league.

But what if we did select the Kangaroos team for the upcoming Test based purely on form? What if a system existed where player performance was measured on a weekly basis, and those who performed best were rewarded? The idea has more legs to support it than a sack full of spiders.

Each week, players could be given a rating out of ten by an independent, impartial expert, similar to the awarding of Dally M points. These points would then be tallied and averaged against the number of games in which each individual has featured, and the resulting figure would be their player rating. The eligible players with the best rating at each position would be selected to represent Australia against the Kiwis. The bench positions could be filled at the discretion of the selectors, allowing for Mal Meninga to address any perceived imbalances in the squad and to ensure the quota of Queenslanders never dips below 80 per cent.

Within this player rating framework, a few rules would also be needed. Firstly, players should only be considered for selection based on the position they play for their club side. The Aussie squad currently has more fullbacks than an Italian football team, and this practice is robbing deserving outside backs of the opportunity to represent their country.

Secondly, a player must have featured in at least 70 per cent of club fixtures to be eligible for selection. This would eliminate players returning from injury just in time for selection, an art perfected in recent times by the likes of Paul Gallen and Robbie Farah.

Now I realise that rugby league purists and footy tragics alike will chortle into their middies of Tooheys Old at the idea of overhauling representative selection. Such radical concepts are usually met with crusty Jack Gibson quotes and glib Wayne Bennett sound bites. Fossils like Gus Gould will produce obsolete catch phrases like “you just select the best 13 players, and then worry about finding them a position later on”.

I’ve shared watered down shandies with my grandmother that were stronger than this argument.

Just imagine the hype that this performance-based selection process would generate among the fans! The average punter would be able to track the performances of players throughout the season and project how these player ratings may shape future representative squads. This would add a new dimension to the coverage of the NRL, and would allow fan engagement on a level unmatched by any other Australian football code.

And how would the players take it? That would probably depend on who you asked. Sure there would be some who would scoff at the idea, particularly the more high-profile players whose performances are already under constant scrutiny. But I am more interested in the opinions of those anonymous souls who struggle and toil throughout 26 gruelling rounds of rugby league, only to receive less recognition than Jan Brady.

Guys like Gavin Cooper, who has accumulated over 200 first-grade games, played a vital role in the Cowboys 2015 premiership campaign, and who continues to play at a high level this season. This system would give men like Cooper a legitimate chance at earning selection in representative teams, which is an opportunity they would otherwise not be afforded.

So now that we have fixed the selection process, what would an Australian team selected based on this criteria look like? Wonder no more! The team at One Week have put their lives on hold, neglected their families and ignored their day jobs to pour over every minute of every game, and have come up with the following team of in-form Kangaroos*:

(*Dramatisation – The team at One Week consists of a solitary man with limited resources and a wife who did not allow him to re-watch every game of the 2016 season. Thus, all player ratings are based on subjective memories clouded by a few beers.)

As you can see, a team picked on form after nine rounds of NRL action would have no Cameron Smith, no Cooper Cronk and certainly no Greg Inglis. But I challenge anybody to argue that their suggested replacements do not deserve to be there.

If rugby league is serious about representative football, it’s time we started treating selection in such teams as an honour available to the many, rather than a right reserved for the few.

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