It’s Mal Meninga’s right to select the team he wants — but when did loyalty come before form?

PAUL KENT: Australia coach Mal Meninga needs to justify his opinion to no one. But when did rep selection become about loyalty over reward?

Did Trent Merrin merit selection ahead of Josh McGuire? Photo: Mark Evans

IT is equally easy to support Mal Meninga and at the same time hard to understand exactly what is happening in rep football.

Loyalty against form is the great topic on the rep arena the moment.

When Meninga took over as Australian coach he knew he must solder the divide between the NSW and Queensland players, a divide that at its worst saw the Queensland players out to celebrate after a Test win and the Blues at a pub up the road.

He did it perfectly: he appealed to their ego.

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Did Trent Merrin merit selection ahead of Josh McGuire? Photo: Mark Evans

“I explained from a personal position,” Meninga said in Sunday’s press, “when you finish your career you look back and know you were the very best player of your time in your position from your Australian jerseys.”

They looked at the two gold Vs on their Australian jerseys and immediately understood.

Every player in the Test squad wants to be the best in their position. Yet politely ignored in the message was that the best players of their time, in these times, are not always picked.

Josh McGuire played the house down against Penrith last Thursday. He outplayed his opposite, Trent Merrin, in every category worth recording and some that were not.

McGuire is no bum. He has five Origins and a Test last year to pump his resume.

Yet Meninga went with Merrin as lock in his Test team because Merrin was lock the last time Australia played in November.

There have been a dozen better wingers than Blake Ferguson through the first nine rounds yet Ferguson, because he was there last November and played so well, is in the No. 2 jersey.

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Meninga needs to justify his opinion to no one and his explanation that the short preparation made it sensible to pick known combinations holds up under any light.

Except the best player in the best position claim.

When, exactly, did the road to rep selection become about loyalty over reward?

Let’s remember, rep football began as a reward to the best players in the competition. It began that way in 1908 and did not change for almost 80 years.

It changed in the early Origin days when Queensland, much like City this weekend, scratched around and could not find sufficient form players to fill out a team sheet.

So the Maroons picked players below form and, faced with the embarrassment of saying they could not find enough form players, they spun it to claim they were rewarding loyalty.

We allowed ourselves to be fooled, happy to peddle the myth because it was good for the game. But somewhere along there we believed it.

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McGuire has been in sensational form for Brisbane. Photo: Darren England.

The myth continues now that Queensland has the best talent available and the Blues have fallen for it. The recent frustration is the Blues have picked the wrong players in the past, stuck with them and paid for it.

It has been allowed to happen because all power has transferred to the coach, the only man guaranteed to be on the team bus, while losing sight of what rep football is about. Reward for excellence.

Little is ever said as it works until a player is selected and fails to handle it, so why stir it up? That’s where Meninga can justify Friday’s Test selections. The players have done it before.

Still, how the world could be different. Meninga played 46 Tests for Australia. He once held the record for most Test appearances for Australia. He captained two Kangaroo tours, the only man to do so. He toured four times, the only man to do so.

Yet he got his start when he pushed in between two all-time greats, Mick Cronin and Steve Rogers.

Before getting truly established in the Australian side he was sometimes pushed aside for the pairing of Brett Kenny and Gene Miles.

Given his formidable presence they pushed him to the wing. Or sometimes to the bench. Even once to the second-row.

Other times, his form put him ahead of them.

What if loyalty was as rigidly followed back then as it is now, and such was the loyalty to others that by the time they retired or moved on Meninga had grown a little grey at the sides and selectors wanted to invest in a young Steve Renouf or Brad Fittler, planning their future?

Some of those jerseys Meninga looks back on, justifiably proud to see, might be in somebody else’s wardrobe.

When all along they deserved to be in his.