DISCORD 2012: Edition 27

by NRL

YOU know what smacked me in the face last night? State of Origin's unfulfilled potential.

This is an event that stops the nation and has all sorts of weird corners of the globe glued to the television set, yet we play it in the same two or three places each year and throw it out there without the sort of promotional push it needs.

There are people like rugby union great Gareth Thomas and soccer players Rio Ferdinand and Joe Barton who sing its praises for free. We should be doing more to harness them.

I want to have a bigger think about this before I doing any "throwing out there" of our own but it's no use having a golden egg if you leave it in the nest.

----------

AS for the Justin Hodges try, people who know more about the laws of the game and their current interpretations have already had their say.

But from where I sat (second row of press box, couldn't see western touchline), commonsense dictated this was a try but current interpretations meant it should not have been.

If you run behind a defender with the ball, unless the depth is enormous, it's an obstruction under current rule interpretations. Several similar tries have been disallowed in recent years.

Ricky Stuart was very sporting indeed not to blow up.

----------

MY colleague Andy Wilson joked after the first England-Exiles game that there was "poor travelling support from Exile-land" at Langtree Park.

Having left Suncorp Stadium at 1.30am this morning, I simply could not face getting up at 5am to watch the second game.

But you know what? When I heard the result today I was involuntarily quite happy. To have Steve Menzies back in representative football and shining was a great thing - as was hearing that Brett Hodgson excelled.

The problem with the fixture is that it lacks meaning. As I keep saying, play it in London on Anzac Day and you'll fix that, quicksmart.

Obviously, it's not good for England that they assemble a team themselves which goes on to beat them. It's like placing an ad in the paper to highlight your own personality defects.

----------

FEEDBACK now and Woody says the Origin eligibility rule should simply be you play for the state in which you were born. We've already outlined the arguments against this but if that's what you still think Woody, fair enough.

Tugger talked about expansion helping the TV rights figure but hurting the quality of the competition. Tugger, an independent consultancy told the NRL clubs before the Independent Commission came to power that extra teams would not appreciably increase the asking price for TV rights so there is no real pressure to expand just for the dollars.

Rabby talked about Bradford being allowed to go bust. I wonder if the news that there are now interested buyers encouraged Michael Potter to coach this weekend for free.

Pommie Greg wanted James Roby as England captain and, hey Presto, that's exactly what happened! Powerful dude, Pommie Greg!

Davey G waxed lyrical on Origin's lost values. Still, hard to argue with what was delivered last night, right?

Mike from Tari likened Jim Doyle running the NRL to Air New Zealand taking over Ansett. But Jim Doyle is not a Kiwi - he's a Scotsman.

Stephen talked about aligning NRL clubs with developing countries. Ah, we've been banging on about this for years Stephen - along with salary cap exemptions for recruiting players from those countries.

Warriorman followed up his comments last week in the Club v Country debate. We have to be pragmatic, our game generates its dollars through the club game. Rugby union generates its cash through representative matches. So our clubs have more power. You can't achieve things by having confrontation at every turn. You've got to pick your mark, plan your battlefields.

Penri's thoughts on eligibility mirror my own expressed in last week's Rugby League Week Big Issue. It will be posted online shortly.

I think an under 20s World Cup would work ? if the game develops its own events arm, like rugby union do with the sevens. It's time for us to go out and start marketing our events to the world.

* The Rugby League Writers Association now has its own Twitter account. Check out @RLWA_worldwide

Your thoughts?