www.couriermail.com.au/sport/nrl ... 6662057361

www.couriermail.com.au/sport/nrl ... 6662057361

I bet every rugby league player would like to play SOO its a pity we don't have the same type of games in this country it would be great

Origin is great rugby, but fake, you can hear the beancounters scrabbling for a plan to get the Burgess bros. into that game by whatever means necessary, and they will.

Do Qs and NSWs [ireally[/i have this burning hatred for each other, and a burning desire over everything to triumph against them in Origin? Of course not.

Rather, the game is such a major and super-hyped event, played at such a high level, in front of such a wild audience, that they would get as pumped even if it was billed as Muppets v Smurfs. Playing on such a stage, there's be something majorly wrong with them if they didn't.

Like two boxers in a major fight, the players - as professionals - feed off the hype to work themselves up and are ready for it at kickoff, and just like a boxing match, we love to buy into the hype, even though we know it is in the vast majority of cases phoney.

All the crowd stuff is fake too. People all play out their act for the day, because it's plainly extremely enjoyable, but they then walk off and have a beer. The game is real, but the mate against mate hype is as genuine as that in WWF. As a concept, Origin is, more than anything else, a true triumph of solid and determined marketing.

That is why Burgess (or any player worth his salt) would of course love to play it. When he does, the fact that he is from the other side of the planet, and not from either Q nor NSW, will not detract from his game one bit.

One sentence in that article sums up my frustration with Rugby League... it says that if you haven’t lived in Australia before the age of 13, you “can’t play in the game’s greatest contest”

Just remind me again who the World Champions are in Rugby League? Origin may be a high standard but until we recognise that international Rugby League should be our primary focus we will always be looking inward and not outward

One of the better descriptions of commercial sport I've seen.

Why would Australia want to make international rugby league its primarily focus? They seem to be doing just fine by ignoring international rugby league and looking inwards at their domestic game.

What's in it for them to put importance in the international game when they've got AFL, union, soccer, etc at their doorstep trying to take their fans.

That is partly why Australian RL has become so successful- they have mastered the art of bigging it up as a product and there is nothing Australians enjoy more than a self congratulatory love in. Contrast that to the English and RL fans here in particular, we put ourselves down.

Ultimately it comes down to culture, Australians will always be much easier to win over. Take origin in its current form, when the three game model was first adopted there was a lot of scepticism and people couldn't see the point, but after a few years they accepted it and it has grown in strength from there. As a midseason test Exiles could be the same, but I can't see England fans ever warming to it.

If the origin eligibility rules were changed (again) so that Burgess could play, very few in NSW would complain. League fans here are still hyperventilating over Rangi Chase nearly two years on.

On SL BackChat this week, it was suggested that the Exiles concept is coming to a natural end (at about 10pm on Friday, most likely) as, due to the relatively strong Australian dollar, we will have both a weaker Exiles team, and half the obvious England/GB team selection already playing down under. The idea came up to play a midseason game in Australia, so that we actually have the Australian-based players 'available' (though, if it's not a full international game, I don't think clubs are obliged to release them anyway - no matter where the game is played) for a full squad.

So, if there's an appetite from British players to play in Origin, maybe extending the series a bit to have England play QL and NSW would satisfy that? It's a level below international, like the Exiles, but still a level above the usual opposition; it would allow the full first-choice squad to play together; and it could be a marketing coup: "Mate against mate, state against state, and also against the evil stuck-up Pommie imperialist overlords". Initially, the England games might be looked on patronisingly as an easy warm-up for QL/NSW, until England started winning some, at which point we'd have a stronger international side.

Two England v QL/NSW games could be played over a two-week period, and the final SOO game could be considered part of the round-robin, possibly making it more meaningful if SOO is a dead rubber. On the downside, we lose 10-15 top UK-based players for two weeks but, if we're already restructuring the league, it could be possible to build that gap in for the sake of international development. Also, if we can't even beat the state sides, who's going to take us seriously as an international side?

Not that the NRL will bite, I suppose. I'd watch it, though.

Sorry, LeightonP, but that is a terrible idea.

Fair enough. Why?

I do too, but it doesn't mean I should or will.

I think you are mistaken on pretty well all of your points.

When have any fans from Qld or NSW wanted to adopt a played born and developed to a reasonable talent from overseas.
The rules of SOO have seen some argument regarding who is Qld and NSW but do you really think Sydney fans want to cheer on Sam Burgess?
NO WAY IN THE WORLD.

Sounds good to me...

Sounds a bit mental to me.
Why do you think Australians regard "Pommies" as imperial overlords? maybe before WWII
Australia has been far more aligned with the USA since the 1950's than England and in the last two decades with Asia mainly Japan and now China.
I doubt many Aussies know or understand what the connection is with Great Britain, its was two generations ago.

This is a joke, too.

Ignoring any logistics and focussing on the idea only, you're suggesting to water down a hugely successful product that's never had anything to do with England, just to benefit England.

Why would NSW and QLD (the fans not the teams) want this? As a New South Welshman, I only want to play and beat QLD, and the feeling would be mutual on the other side. That is the rivalry, rich with history, that we turn out and tune in for three times a year. Origin has reached an all-time high in interest over the past couple of years. Why would anyone mess with it now?

As far as I'm aware he only went to the NRL to get Australian citizenship as the whole family wanted to emigrate.

Origin should stay exactly as it is. Why change a concept that works so well.

Not just England, but the international game as a whole. It can't be any more fun for you as an Australian to always be expecting to pound England in internationals than it is for us to expect always to beat, say, France. The professional sport is hardly capturing the public imagination at a national level here, and a large contribution to that is that the international game isn't very strong. A stronger international competition that improves the profile, uptake, support and sponsorship of RL in the UK would have benefits that feed back to Australia.

Also, I don't agree that it would water down SOO any more than, say, the Barbarians game degraded the current Union Lions tour. Be patronising and treat any England games as a pre-competition warm-up by all means. Treat them as 'tour games' conceptually distinct from SOO if it's going to be a problem - but we need a way to get the intensity of the game up to the same sort of level, and riding on the coat-tails of SOO could do that for it. It's a compliment to what SOO has become that it would be, practically, an international level game.



Maybe they're interested in the sport, and would want to watch the game? Possibly they would like to confirm that their state team can beat the third-ranked national side, and is as good as they think it is? They might be thinking more widely about what could benefit the sport as whole. It could even be that they would be led into some fakey tribal rivalry by clever marketing.



You may not be speaking for everyone and, to be fair, the three-match series has only been around since 1982 (and once had a fourth match for exhibition purposes). Also, before the 80s players were selected on the basis of where they were currently playing - not where they were born/played first. So it's not like the contest is some unchangeable ritual. Who knows, you might even come to enjoy beating England every year in a warm up to the SOO

France v England could be our SOO if France could get any good at playing RL!

I can't speak for everyone, but I'm absolutely certain 80k won't turn up to ANZ to watch NSW vs England, not even close. Neither will more than 10% of Australia's population tune in to watch it on TV. That is watering down Origin.

I don't want to see NSW beat England, that's what the Kangaroos are for. And for argument's sake, let's say NSW or QLD, or both states, did beat England. What good could that possibly do for the international game? Might as well put it in a coffin. Potential to harm it and Origin at the same time.

Let's just leave it, please.

Well, over 50k turned up to see QLD Reds play the touring union side last week - even though they're also playing the national side, and weren't expecting to win - so if you're not the kind of person who can be bothered to go, I hope you're not representative. Or is union bigger than league down there, now?



If the international game was healthy, I might agree. But it's not. It's dying on its through lack of interest and a microscopic media profile. No-one at work (I'm outside the heartlands) knows there's a world cup this year - they all know there's a union world cup next year, even though they aren't even rugby fans. Why is there a lack of interest? In part because we wallop France, and get walloped by you lot, while you lot wallop everyone apart from NZ - and no-one's interested in one-sided contests (and the media don't give a toss, by and large). If there isn't actually competition in games, there won't be a meaningful international competition at all.

Even Sky couldn't be bothered putting on a half-hour pre-game preview for the England/Exiles game. The people who give a toss are currently a subset of the hardened club fans. If we want a healthy sport that will prosper, we have to get interest from casual viewers, and that interest is realistically only going to come with internationals and media coverage. And they're only going to care if they're competitive.

We carry on down this route, and professional RL will be confined to Sydney, with a couple of expansion clubs in Brisbane, Auckland and Melbourne. There's success and an attractive product in SOO - we could use that as leverage for the good of the game.

Or not. It's not like anyone's going to read this thread and follow up on the idea

Over half of which were travelling Lions fans.

15k Queenslanders would still be more than we convinced to go [iany[/i "International Origin" game, over here.

But you were talking about Australia, not 'over here'.

But I was replying to [iyou[/i, and [iyou[/i were talking about the number of touring Lions fans, to make the point that a large part of that 50k were tourists. The news suggests about 30k are over there to see the Lions games, so that would imply about 20k Aussies/others turning up to watch the Reds play the Lions. Which is more than have ever turned up for any Exiles game.