Could Origin eventually use a dedicated set of players and not share them with the NRL?

I fail to grasp the logic of trying to make the game bigger by making it smaller. The logic has made a mess out of both Rugby and Cricket and would do the same to NRL.

State of Origin should play 3x stand alone weekends during mid year but not sure what would work better 3x weekends in a row or game 1 state of origin then have 2 weeks of NRL then game 2 etc. I think there should have 4 representing weekends during the season, The 1st rep weekend falling on the same weekend as the A league with Friday night City v Country + Saturday night Round 1 Pacific Cup Tonga v Samoa - Fiji v PNG & have Sunday for A league GF. A few weeks later 2nd Rep Weekend - Round 2 Pacific Cup - Samoa v Fiji - PNG v Tonga - Round 1 State of Origin NSW v QLD - Test Round 1 - England v New Zealand (USA City). (New York) 3rd Rep Weekend - Round 3 Pacific Cup - Samoa v PNG - Tonga v Fiji - Round 2 State of Origin QLD v NSW - Test Round 2 New Zealand v England (USA City). (Denver) 4th Rep Weekend - Pacific Cup Final 1 v 2 - Round 3 State of Origin QLD v NSW - Test Round 3 England v New Zealand(USA City) (LA or Hawaii)

Yea and what goals and ambitions do all the other players in the NRL have to play for if rep footy is taken up by the elite few?

Spot on paul...It used to be the best v the Best but with a third of NRL players from NZ and another 10% from other countries than Aus its fast becoming the best of the rest.....Then remove any players from any other state and its looking like around 50% of the NRL is available for SOO...Certainly not the best anymore

Paul D without State of Origin there would be No Rugby League these days. Sad but true

That parasite continues to be THE most watched program on TV every year and that doesn't include the international viewers. It attracts people to the game who's only interest in league stems from Origin. Has it lost relevance? That's your opinion so fair enough if it has to you. Of course, after such a long period of QLD dominance some of the passion might die away but I do guarantee that a lot more people will regain that interest now NSW has won a series and with the team they have, have a good chance of going back-to-back (he says through gritted teeth). I do agree that it takes away from the season regular but the NRL are introducing Sunday games and stand-alone weeks to combat severely depleted teams taking each other on. While we may not get any club games during that time, we now have an international series that will develop the international game. To your point about being a long season, these bye-weekends give most players a chance to regroup and get over niggling injuries. So from my POV, we now get a good, high quality season of NRL but with a few breaks in the middle. An Origin series and an International series within that break period so we're not really missing out on our league 'fix'. It's the best of both worlds.

The top tier of Cricket in Australia is the Sheffield Shield which includes 6 teams - but unlike State of Origin the eligibility rules for players is fairly loose. I can't see any appetite for a 6-team Provincial Competition operating at the top tier of Rugby League - replacing State of Origin and also relegating the NRL to a Tier 2 competition. For starters, the NRL would not be a Tier 2, as the intensity of the NRL is not so much different from State of Origin nowadays.

State of Origin is a parasite on the back of the NRL. The very existence of the competition means that interest is focused solely on the two states participating, it guts interest and players from the regular season for 6-8 weeks, ruins the integrity of proceedings. The NRL season is already far too long as it is - 26 rounds is waaaaaay overkill for a heavy contact sport and results in players being clapped out, tired and broken well before the end of the season. Maybe it's nostalgia talking but I think it's lost a tremendous amount of relevance since the heyday of the late 80's and 1990's. It used to be a really passionate contest that burned like hell when QLD lost. Nowadays it's just another high quality game of football and the state collectively shrugs and goes whatever. So no, I don't see your idea getting up.

This thought bubble is effectively the same as shrinking the size of the comp by getting rid of teams out of NSW. Where are the big money sponsors going to go if two teams have the top 20 or 30 Australian players?

If there was a tangible benefit to these so-called Origin training camps, by all means spend the tens of thousands it has to cost to host them. If not, they're just an excuse for Freddy and the boys to get together, have a few beers and potentially get into the sort of mischief that ends careers.

I used to be a fan of these camps but now I think the NRLPA may need to look into limiting these type of things. Seems dumb to me that players can be cherry picked out of Pre season training for a camp designed to let players “get a feel for it”.

Short answer: No Long answer: No

Its actually not a bad idea for them to go fulltime with, say, 20 man squads. They could both play a series or a match against Great Britain during the season and join the international season from October, even playing Australia!

But Fred tells us Rugby League is going gangbusters over in the UK ( Northern England )

Yeah - hopefully they will run their course when they realise it wasn't the camps that helped QLD to win 10 out of 11 series (or whatever it was), it had a little something to do with Smith, Cronk, Thurston, Slater etc...

So the dedicated players are going to train for 49 weeks and play 3 weeks? How and when and on what performances are you to select dedicated players? Why not give up the whole concept of origin and let a Lebanese team play?

This sounds an awful like RU or Cricket where the best players only play in rep games. The biggest problem: who are they playing against? League is no where near big enough to have an international comp where they can play reasonably consistently all year and if Origin was played anymore than it is right now, the novelty aspect that entices +3.5m people to watch would soon diminish. No sporting administration in the world has all the answers as there is no perfect system. Someone/team/club somewhere is always going to get the rough end of the pineapple but using players as a bargaining tool loses sight of the reason any of them have a job - entertain the public. Sometimes we take sports entertainment too seriously because there is big money involved. If the quality of the game is diminished to suit agendas a new generation of fans will look else where and the sponsors, advertisers, thus, TV rights money will go with it.

They should expand State of Origin to include a team each from Victoria, New Zealand, the ACT and North Queensland (when they achieve Statehood) and maybe Western Australia. Then, since there is no longer a City-Country clash, add some NSW Country Teams like Newcastle, Illawarra, Blue Mountains, Macarthur. A team from the geographic centre of Sydney might be nice too, lets say the historic Parramatta region. Oh, and a few teams representing our beach regions too - the Gold Coast, Manly, Bondi, Cronulla for example. That makes 16 teams - which has got to be better than the NRL!

Exactly BA, these camps, especially for Emerging Maroons and Blues are a massive wonk. NSw only do them to copy Qld.

Salaries get bigger and clubs get less from their stars and leaders who should be at club training setting the tone and leading from the front. Origin needs to be reigned in. People watch Origin regardless of the quality of the match and who is playing so why do Origin need to have camps in January?