ARL Commission chairman John Grant says State of Origin’s scheduling is being reviewed as Wayne Bennett ramps up his fight to have the code’s showpiece event held on stand-alone weekends.
Grant said the NRL’s head of game strategy, Shane Richardson, was exploring a number of alternatives to map out Origin’s future and whether there is merit in briefly suspending the NRL season.
State of Origin is increasingly becoming a marketing and financial beast for the NRL.
This year’s series attracted record crowds of 224,135 across the three games, with the first two fixtures in Sydney and Melbourne amassing an estimated $12.1 million in ticket sales.
The jewel in league’s crown is being valued at around $150m annually, but the surge in interest and the ferocious intensity of games is putting added stress on Origin’s elite players.
Six Queenslanders carried injuries into last Wednesday night’s decider and Grant said the governing body was open to change if Richardson’s probe found Origin scheduling could be improved.
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Wayne Bennett is determined to get his pint across.
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“I won’t rule anything out.
“Shane Richardson is currently looking at it and as a code we’re looking at a number of alternatives.
“If there’s some justification for changing it, we will contemplate changing it.
“The big stakeholders in this are the fans and of course the broadcasters. While we’re not going to unnecessarily make our decisions based on that (broadcasting), it is an important criteria.
“State of Origin is a valuable product and we’ll take all points of view into account.”
Bennett launched a fresh attack on the NRL a fortnight ago, when Broncos and Maroons winger Darius Boyd suffered a groin injury after playing three games in nine days.
The master coach wants the NRL season to be put on hold for a month and the three Origin games to be played on successive weekends.
Bennett turned up the heat on the NRL on Friday, insisting Origin scheduling will be improved when the penny drops at League Central.
ARL Commission chairman John Grant says all options are up for discussion.
Source: News Corp Australia
“It might take five or 10 years (for the NRL to agree with him), most things I’ve talked about take five or 10 years to materialise.
“It was like the grapple tackle, that started in 2001 and it was 2010 before we realised we had a problem in the game.
“I told every administrator every day of the week we had issues there.
“I will persevere with this. It will win out in the end, it’s the right balance and the NRL will recognise that.’’
Stand-alone Origin games were played on Sunday nights in 2001 but the showpiece event returned to the traditional Wednesday timeslot the following year.
“I’ve been around long enough to see the combinations we’ve tried for State of Origin,” Grant said.
“We settled on Wednesdays over a six-week period a long time ago.
“You have to talk to the broadcasters. We have done better this year in terms of players and sequencing games. We think it’s worked better.”
Originally published as ARL puts Origin schedule under review
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