State of Utopia: Why Origin should be five-game contest as NRL tries yet another way to sandwich series into calendar

Playing the old “if you’re going to start rugby league from scratch” game, there’s no way State of Origin would be just three games. 

Just like Twenty20 has become the global cash cow for cricket and is rapidly taking over the calendar and the sport altogether, Origin is the mid-season behemoth that ensures the ARL Commission can fund the many mouths that need feeding on the league landscape. 

If you measure the NRL by all the main metrics, the interest levels grow from Round 1 through to the end of the regular season and actually tails off pretty dramatically when the finals arrive and half the fan bases no longer have a dog in the fight.

But there are three peaks that jump off the page in the NRL’s week by week annual comparisons and the first one for 2023 will coincide with a team in sky-blue trying to do everything within the rules (of the sport and physics) to prevent their maroon-clad opponents from accumulating more points than them over an 80 minutes.

(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

A time frame which for the TV viewer, who brings in lucrative broadcast rights deals for the sport and advertising revenue for Nine, is stretched to nearly three hours when you factor in the pre-game show and extended half-time break when the commercials come thick and fast. 

While in theory a five-game Origin series would be one of the starting points for how the schedule makers would base a season if there wasn’t 115 years of premiership history counting against it ever happening in the real world. 

A five-game series would have to be accompanied by a reduced regular season from the current set-up of 24 matches per team over 27 rounds and the entrenched clubs would never let that happen.

The 2023 NRL schedule is a test case on yet another new way to fit Origin onto the calendar while also trying to keep the premiership ticking along. It’s a juggling act that has no perfect solution but the NRLthinks this one is the least worst option.

For the first time, each team will receive three byes this season. 

Seven teams are putting their feet up this weekend – the Bulldogs, Panthers, Roosters, Sharks, Storm, Titans and Tigers. 

Three sides (largely unaffected by Origin selection, it turns out) will have a bye after Origin I next Wednesday – the Eels, Knights and Sea Eagles. 

The NRL returns to normal the following round in the lead-up to Origin II sides being selected – the Cowboys have the bye then which is somewhat odd in that, based on last year’s selections, there was a fair chance they’d be heavily affected by Maroons duty. 

Before the second Origin in Brisbane, it’ll be the Broncos, Dolphins, Dragons, Rabbitohs, Raiders, Warriors and Titans (again) not having to worry about playing without their rep stars. Again, the Warriors getting the bye in this round is far from ideal given they rarely have a player in the Origin fray. 

Canterbury, Cronulla and the Tigers get the post Origin II bye, in Round 18 it’s Parramatta and then before the series decider, the Broncos, Cowboys, Knights, Panthers, Roosters, Sea Eagles and Storm won’t be fielding depleted line-ups. 

The mid-season experiment ends in Round 20 in the days after Origin III in Sydney with the Dragons, Rabbitohs and Raiders resting up in the final abbreviated round. 

That’s eight weeks where the club competition is directly or indirectly affected by the annual interstate grudge matches. 

It’s a time of the year where the rusted-on league tragics will remain devoted to the ebbs and flows of the NRL but casual fans tend to switch off a match like Brisbane’s clash with the Warriors this Saturday when one team is missing five of their best players because of a representative fixture a few days later while the other one is at full strength.

Last year’s system included a Representative Round included an Origin on a Sunday which gave every team a bye simultaneously. 

With the explosion in the number of mid-year Tests featuring Pacific teams, it meant that many teams like premiers Penrith still had virtually their entire team representing their state or their homeland so there was very little respite from the weekly NRL grind. 

(Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)

The main reason for the NRL abandoning the Rep Round was because TV ratings for the Sunday Origins in recent years were down compared to Wednesday nights. 

And the NRL has been up front in admitting that it can’t afford to devalue the NSW vs Queensland product in any way so the mid-year Tests became the sacrificial lamb at the Origin altar. 

The NRL wants to institute an annual international window in October-November for Tests to be played. 

A noble enough gesture but it would be easier to accept the NRL’s sincerity about protecting the sanctity of the international game if it wasn’t May 25 and there is still no official word on when the Kangaroos will be playing, where it will be and who will be their opponents.

There’s been plenty said about the umpteenth grand plan to stage NRL games in the US next year but if you want to know the details of the matches for the national men’s or women’s sides later this year, all you can do is make an educated guess.

Particularly in light of France’s recent decision to withdraw from hosting the next World Cup in 2025, if international rugby league doesn’t want to be a laughing stock, it needs to be treated seriously by those who run the game. 

(Photo by Fiona Goodall/Getty Images)

Otherwise it gives more ammunition to fans of other sports who say it’s just a glorified heritage exercise where players pick and choose which countries they want to represent. 

Even though a five-game Origin series would be an awesome spectacle and actually boost rugby league’s coffers, the pivot towards investing in the international game is the right move. 

The historic announcement that Tonga will tour England later this year for a three-Test series shows that genuine expansion beyond the big three nations is happening. 

If the tour is successful, it should open the door for Samoa to follow suit while Mal Meninga’s long-held hope for the reintroduction of a Kangaroo Tour should also become a reality in the next few years.