While I was happy with the combined effort of the Blues in the first Origin match of the series, I can’t help but think that there are still some in-house politics ruining their chances.
No matter how well things are looking for the Blues, there are always going to be great players with potential overlooked for others who clearly don’t deserve to be there.
In the Queensland camp on the other hand, players are brought in on form, and while there are loyalties that do play a part, their players always seem to perform on the game’s biggest stage.
I believe lot of this has to do with the politics running through each team’s inner sanctum.
Take the selection for Dylan Walker for example. Having struggled at five-eighth for the Sea Eagles all year, the young premiership winner was shifted back to his preferred position at centre a week before the series started.
He was then selected as the Blues’ bench utility even though he had only played two positions during his first grade career, not including his stints at fullback to cover injuries.
Some have questioned where Walker’s selection came from, and I think there’s a fairly obvious answer – Manly Sea Eagles legend and rugby league Immortal Bob Fulton.
Fulton was at the forefront of recruiting Walker from Souths, and was rumoured to have lured him across the bridge with the guarantee of an Origin jersey. While these reports haven’t been confirmed, there is sure as hell is a lot of evidence to support them.
Needless to say, even the armchair experts were right in predicting that Dylan Walker’s selection would be a bad one, only playing the last nine minutes with an error as the one contribution to his name. To be fair, yes, it was partially Laurie Daley’s fault for utilising him the way he did, but surely a better option could have been conceived.
The sad thing about what I’m saying is that the Blues have a history of making these ‘off’ selections, and the results over the past ten years have shown. While Queensland built a mighty team around the same core players, only changing due to external forces like injury or retirement, the Blues went about picking players who either had relationships with the coach, former players, official or purely because they played for a powerhouse club.
Because of this bias, plenty of players have been robbed of chances to shine in the Origin arena, where others have been given more than what they realistically deserve.
While I do like Laurie Daley’s approach of wiping the slate fairly clean of the team, I do believe the same needs to be done for the selection board.
Fulton, Bob McCarthy and Geoff Gerard were all great players in their heyday, but it’s time for a new set of selectors to come in. We need blokes like Peter Sterling, Brad Fittler and Andrew Johns to step up to the plate, people who have played Origin in the last two decades that know the modern game inside and out.
We need people who have had coaching gigs at clubs, not blokes who have been retired for 40 years and are living off past glories.
Politics like this have deprived New South Wales from the potential they could have reached in the last decade. While they’ve been twiddling their thumbs and humming, Queensland have built up a squad and culture that is the envy of all other rugby league clubs.
It’s time for a clean slate. It’s time we replaced the old with the new. It’s time for a new Blues.
Reckon you can pick the winning team? Build your own dream team with Draftstars daily fantasy and compete on any match. For great odds on the NRL head on over to PlayUp. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.
Queensland often has the right mix of generational talent, playmaking brilliance and these nuts-and-bolts players that bind them together like glue.
There are few greater sledges you can give an NRL team than calling them pretenders but the Cowboys will not be contenders until they…
The Parramatta coach was furious with his side after coughing up a first-half lead and going on to lose 44-16 in an embarrassing second-half…
Jamayne Isaako missed five out of nine conversions in a huge win over the Eels - with the Channel Nine team having some fun…
The Eels led 8-4 at half-time. They lost 44-16 in a Dolphins onslaught.
Who is this team and what have they done with the Dolphins? With Wayne Bennett consigned to his sick bed back in Redcliffe, the…
