Why it would be a mistake to start the abbreviated NRL season with an Origin series
Some have put forth the idea that State of Origin should be played as soon as the NRL season resumes. This is an idea drive by nothing but self-interest writes PAUL KENT.
Opinion
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Rugby league has always had a small love affair with the bad idea.
That was always part of its charm. That it has never stopped them trying.
In many ways this attitude was the game’s strength. That willingness to have a crack. If it meant at times the game had to pick itself up and dust off, well, so be it.
Part of the game’s DNA was always a go get ’em attitude. The most famous example to recently get a mention, easy to remember, was John Quayle’s gamble on Tina Turner back in 1989.
An American grandmother to sell the working class game in Australia? Quayle gambled his career on it.
Tim Sheens was always regarded as an innovator. Back in 1994 Sheens signed a young African sprinter to play with the Raiders.
Horace Dove-Edwin won silver at the 1994 Commonwealth Games, finishing behind Linford Christie, and Sheens shocked many when he offered him a contract for the following season.
It was a new frontier for the game.
Then Dove-Edwin tested positive to steroids and the contract, along with the silver medal, was gone.
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That pioneer spirit often drove rugby league. It was what drove the game’s formation back in 1908, if you want to go back that far.
Now the game is about to begin its next revolution.
Wayne Pearce heads the new innovation committee at the NRL and this week they gave themselves several large migraines thinking of different ways to get the competition back running again.
How many games, do we split into conferences, what does the finals structure look like?
All this to consider.
The biggest concern for the committee is biosecurity. How to get the players in a bubble and ensure they are protected from infection.
The second greatest concern is the competition structure. What the shortened season looks like.
ARL Commission chairman Peter V’Landys has given Pearce a July 1 deadline to work towards but Pearce, who was always The Little Engine That Could, is quietly pushing to be back before then.
Part of this week’s discussion around the competition was State of Origin and when it should be played.
It surprised no-one that the idea was received gleefully at the Independent. Always (But Mostly Sometimes). Sydney Morning Herald, now owned by Channel Nine and which, quite by coincidence, has exclusive broadcast rights for the Origin series.
The same Channel Nine that stopped paying its bills.
Unfortunately for the Herald, it was just one idea that was proposed along with an Origin series midway through the regenerated season and also at the end of the season.
Neither of those options got support, though, as they threaten to interrupt Nine’s broadcast of the T20 World Cup.
That aside, kicking off the season with a full-blown Origin series sits right next to Horace Dove-Edwin as one of those good ideas that fails the test.
While it would undoubtedly give the NRL season an almighty kickstart, a burst of publicity and feel good emotions, the negatives are too severe for the game.
It fails both in terms of footy and finance, which is vital. With the country in financial free fall money is on all our minds.
Beginning the season with Origin is unfair on clubs haemorrhaging so badly at the moment.
Right now they are fighting to survive.
To stage an Origin series before the game gets going again means clubs will be asked to wait at least a further three weeks until the Origin series is over before they can begin playing themselves.
That is another three weeks before the clubs qualify for their broadcast money.
Another three weeks before hundreds of employees can begin getting paid again.
Another three weeks before clubs can begin recouping losses.
Another three weeks for 400-odd NRL players to sit around waiting for the chosen few to entertain everybody.
Three weeks with just one game played when it could be eight.
Then, when it is finally over, the 16 coaches get their Origin stars back flat and emotionally drained, like they always are after Origin, to restart their shortened season.
The only winner to come from it all is Channel Nine, who has already stopped paying its bills and who leaked this week that - in good news! - the cancellation of the NRL season would save the company $130 million.
A mid-season Origin series makes more sense. Players are match-fit and importantly it would give the season a buffer if a fresh outbreak cancelled one or two games.
If there is one certainty to emerge from the coronavirus pandemic it is that rugby league will undergo an immediate re-set.
The entire world is about to go through a financial correction.
That could be a tremendous thing for the game provided they get it right.
It gives the game not only an opportunity to get creative about the coronavirus interrupted season but a complete re-set for every season forward.
Underlining it all will be financial viability. There are bad ideas and many good ideas around at the moment but all anybody should be interested in are good ideas that make money, or at the very least are financially sustainable.
For too long the game has indulged itself with fanciful ideas that shined brightly in press conferences and later bled through the financial reports.
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Already it seems everybody with an idea on the game, and some without, are offering ideas on what the game should look like going ahead.
The current financial stress gives the game an opportunity to use this free thinking to their advantage.
All I ask is they make the integrity of the competition remain their first priority.
Don’t turn the game into a circus act for cheap ratings and cheap crowds.
For one, the game’s sense of humour is not that subtle.
After the Raiders failed to land Dove-Edwin they focused on another African sprinter, not as well known but one reportedly on the way up.
Given he was younger and yet to graduate to the national stage he would even come cheaper.
Willy Orwonti was a young winger out of Sierra Leone, in western Africa where the sprinter gene is strong.
Word leaked that the Raiders were out to sign him and, because in this game when one coughs they all get a cold, suddenly the North Sydney Bears were interested too.
The Bears tried their best to get to Orwonti before the Raiders but failed to locate him. The harder he was to find the more convinced they were the Raiders had him stashed away.
Word was Orwonti was signing with the Raiders and then he wasn’t. Then he was again.
Soon the league writers were onto it and began ringing the clubs asking for more details. How fast was he? Has he ever played even rugby?
The Raiders were being so secretive they even denied all knowledge of him.
The Bears, tired of being second fiddle, chased harder.
Then someone in at Bears’ headquarters looking at his name on a piece of paper said it out loud and a penny dropped.
Willy Orwonti. Will he, or won’t he.
The Bears quietly ended their search.
Since then Willy Orwonti has popped up in various gags around the game, named on extended benches.
Then according to dodgy records he finally made the team sheet for the Bears Premier League team, in jumper 19, in 2007 against St George Illawarra.
Nobody knows who was behind the original practical joke but, for a time, as only rugby league can, they legitimately searched hard for him.