Opinion
It must be tiring. You have the best cattle, you have the best resources, you have Freddy, Joey and Gus- the brains trust. Yet, you leave, more often than not… unfulfilled.
Yes. It sucks, but in the age of modernity, where professional sportsmen and women are rewarded for their skill set, NSW simply have no incentive to perform.
There is no pride in that ever-changing Westpac jersey. Although Josh Addo-Carr tried to rebut this last night during his walk of shame in the final minutes, you simply can’t pit passion versus self interest. It’s quick math.
2 + 2 is Daly Cherry Evans running down Stephen Crichton when everyone else had given up. It’s the 1,000 tackles Ruben Cotter made in game one and above all, it’s the 55,000 Queenslanders that travelled to attend last night’s game from Ellen Grove to Emerald.
So why don’t they ever get the math right? Origin comes and goes in the blink of an eye. The sun rises at the end of May and sets before July 31st.
While Origin performances may raise your stocks in terms of Australian honours and boost your net worth, in the overall scheme of things, it doesn’t really matter.
Players can still earn more than 800k per year whether or not they appear in SOO matches, especially in Sydney where there are 11 teams to choose from.
Why do you think so many N.S.W players call time before their sands run out? Call it premature, my wife does, but they are simply protecting the nest egg the game has helped them build and at the end of the day, they are backing the super fund over the accolades. And so they should.
For kids growing up in Queensland though, the sporting pantheon is an Origin series win. For kids south of the Tweed, it’s winning a NSWRL flag.
We are different breeds. Billy Slater summed it up post match last night when he reminded us about “Arthur Beetson running out in the first Origin”. Very few New South Welshmen could name their first captain.
From 1981 to 2023 very little has changed. It won’t, until you learn to respect the game over the almighty dollar and stop picking blokes that are injury prone or of the grub variety.
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