The whole SOO selection is a farce so what do you expect? NSWelshmen playing for Q'land, an ineligible player playing for NSW, players excluded despite playing their first senior game in either state because they'd rather play for another country than Australia.

great concept as long as you don't scrtach the surface too hard. As said lets just enjoy the games and the spectacle and not worry too much about the farce of selection. Wouldn't be RL unless there was some administritive BS decisions!

changa wrote: when war of the roses DID exist you are avoiding answering yourself

tell me about AFL origin?

or their international series?

Origin is the jewel in australias sporting crowd with 10 million combined TV viewers each year.

AFL can touch it

Stop arguing with the idiot!

Thanks i will!

What the frick has AFL got to do with SOO criteria for selection, that is shown to be farcical time and again? As i said enjoy the game and just accept that RL administration is cr4p, always has been, always will. Unless of course you have an answer to why Hayne is playing when he isn't eligible to play for Australia?

You don't like it, don't watch it!


Seriously, just go and do what ever it is you people over there in Perth do with your cousins and pets.

i enjoy the fact that RL is australias biggest sport by a long margin and that AFL fans get paranoid and upset about this.

imagine RL with only 15 teams in australia is bigger than AFL with 16 australian teams.

imagine how the comparison would be if we included the warriors.

Nobody is talking about the AFL.

i might have scared ''declaration'' off. from his own answers

So you want me to answer a hypothetical question.

If the "war of the roses" selection was based on county of birth, then obviously it should only be available to English people.

If, as was the case previously, people from other counties could play for whichever they first professional football in, then I would expand this to other nationalities.

Although, I would perhaps have an age limit on when they could first make their debut, to stop the over-the-hil, money grabbing Aussies from playing.

Ultimately, 'War of the Roses' was a competition about where a person is from, 'State of Origin' is not, and there is no need for racially discrimatory slection policies.

maybe we could open origin selection up to kiwis. north island can play for queensland. south island can play for nsw

That wouldnt work.

Queensland already lay claimed to the entire South Pacific!

apart from nz's craig smith during the super league war, every player to ever play origin is an australian who first learnt to play rugby league in australia. players have a choice, they opt to play for australia and are therefore open to play for a state of australia in origin, or they choose to play for any other country they are eligible for. some, such as hunt, civoneceva play for the country where they grew up and came through the rugby league ranks, some such as cayless, pritchard etc play for the country of their families heritage. the players have the ability to make a choice, what is the problem?

and mid north nsw coast.inglis

err Hunt first learned to play RL in NZ for the Avondale Wolves!

fair call, i was under the impression he had only ever played for souths acacia ridge.

Bartenders shouldnt have kids .

Not sure how much he learnt as a 10 year old to be honest.
Given he played some toddler league in NZ where all 26 players run after the ball at once.

He moved to Oz at 11 years of age and played Oz Schoolboys before Brisbane brought him through.

Don't forget that if I went to school in Australia I could play for Australian schoolboys. I'd still be English though.

If you WANTED to be and had not emigrated to Australia or felt you were a citizen of that country.
Karmichael chose not to represent New Zealand (or the Cook Islands or Samoa)
I only mentioned the schoolboys in relation to the bulk of his development at an age that has greater value was in Australia not as a 6-10 year old kid at Avondale.
Martin Gleeson was developed in Brisbane but I am not trying to claim him as an Aussie by any means.

I think you'll find the Gleeson story is so pumped up that its beyond ridiculous.


Look at how terrible he plays. You really think he learned to play the game in the number one Rugby League city in the world?

super soward

nz deserve their own origin. there were plans to have a 'kiwi roots' series to start last year but i havnt heard anymore about it. it was basically an auckland v everything south series.

It went no where because the NZRL are f***ing sh*thouse.

true, possibly the worst run sporting organisation going in the past. things are sure to improve in the coming years after their overhaul.