With a handful of devastating injuries derailing teams’ hopes for finals run occurring in State of Origin, is it time to re-adjust the timing of the showpiece event?
After years of experimenting with a mixture of different scheduling options, the NRL opted to keep the traditional Wednesday night slots as a permanent fixture for the foreseeable future.
The NRL had previously trialled Origin as the headline of the now redundant representative round on a Sunday night and played the entire season after the Covid-affected 2020 season – both saw a decline in viewership.
With players like Tom Trbojevic, Nathan Cleary, Cam Murray and Latrell Mitchell all suffering significant injuries during the Origin period, SEN’s Matty Johns admitted it would be beneficial for the players if the game moved to a standalone fixture.
“It’s player welfare versus ratings and revenue, and series interest, that’s the drama,” Johns said on SEN 1170 The Round Up.
“From a spectator’s point of view, leave it how it is but I fully understand it from a player and club point of view.
“Ideally I would like to see it as a standalone, (if you do that) it gives an opportunity to play a lot of international football during that time, the risk is of course stopping the momentum of the season.”
The NRL officially put an end to the traditional representative round last year due to the extension of the 2022 calendar with the Rugby League World Cup just weeks after the NRL Grand Final.
“I think for probably two of the games they should be standalone, (not) all three, just to take a bit of the pressure off the players,” Johns added.
“If you look at the NFL (they play) 17 games with no playoffs, we have 26 rounds, as the Yanks like to say with no pads, and you’ve got every player out there playing, it’s not like you’ve got offence and defence (teams).
“Having a couple of standalone rounds where the clubs can sort of lick their own wounds and recover, I think that would be beneficial.”
The NRL has remained relatively quiet when discussing this topic in recent times leading to the likelihood of the schedule reaming the same for the foreseeable future.