Can State of Origin save an NRL season that’s losing its way?

Source : ABC NEWS

An Origin-depleted clash between Manly and Gold Coast is an unlikely place to find some refreshment but amid a broken NRL season we must take the relief where we can find it.

The Sea Eagles’ 12-10 win on Saturday was not of the highest quality with both teams missing several of their best players, but it was one of the few games this season when points were truly at a premium.

Even if it was far from a classic, the lack of scoring gave it a different rhythm from what we’ve come to expect of rugby league in 2026.

It was a little tighter and a little tenser, and that distinctiveness is a prize all its own because almost halfway through the season it’s clear the game is buckling under the weight of set restarts.

We can expect those trends to continue over the next six weeks as State of Origin sucks the life out of the NRL season, as it does every year, by keeping some of the game’s best players out of commission.

But ahead of the series opener in Sydney on Wednesday the greater question becomes whether Origin can jump-start a season that, like a drunk trying to find their way home in the dark, is staggering along uncertainly while stopping occasionally to fall on their face.

We are almost halfway through the season and the early doomsday predictions of a return to the point-slop football of 2021, the previous season under a similar rule set, have come true.

The NRL’s decision to turn the dial as far as it will go has resulted in record numbers of blowouts, attacking shootouts that resemble Under 20s matches and an unsustainable pace of play that’s resulted in the kind of mind-numbing football that proves you really can have too much of a good thing and there is such a difference between more and better.

Right now, the top two teams on the ladder, Penrith and New Zealand, are averaging the fifth and sixth most points scored per game of any teams in history, nestled snugly below two sides from 2021.

Each of the top five tryscorers in the league this year are going significantly better than a try per game. Through 12 rounds, all five of them have at least 14 tries. Last year, only 13 players across the entire league managed more than that through the full regular season.

Penrith’s Thomas Jenkins has scored just two tries in his past four matches, but with 18 in 11 games he’s still odds on to smash Alex Johnston’s NRL era record of 30, which was set — you guessed it — in 2021.

On the other side of the ball, Parramatta, the worst defensive side in the league this year, is conceding the sixth most points per game of any team since 1908, and St George Illawarra are one defeat away from equalling the worst start to a season in NRL history.

There are too many all-time numbers, too much history being made and too many parallels to the last time the NRL sacrificed a season on the altar of set restarts for any of this to be a coincidence.

The inherent inconsistency of the rule is frustrating fans and coaches alike, and some of the game’s most accomplished players have admitted to not watching as many matches as they once did because of what the game has become.

In light of all this, rugby league needs some good news — not on the balance sheet or in a financial report or in carefully curated stats about ball-in-play time, but on the field in the form of a few gripping and furious contests to burn away the fog that’s engulfed 2026.

State of Origin can provide it, but whether that can happen is dependent on whether Origin can be immune to what has happened to the rest of the NRL.

It’s already a different game and has been for some time due to its speed and intensity. As Queensland’s win in last year’s decider showed, in a place for the quick and the dead speed is the only weapon worth having.

According to James Tedesco, the most-experienced and longest serving player in this year’s series, that change has only become more noticeable since his Origin debut in 2016.

“The game has changed. It’s gotten even quicker. It’ll be interesting to see how it’s reffed on Wednesday night, if it’ll be six agains or if they leave it alone,” Tedesco said.

“The main change is the athletes. They’ve gotten so much bigger, faster and stronger. It’s how it’s evolved.

“The biggest difference is the intensity. It’s faster, the hits are harder, it’s more brutal. You feel it more, too. You feel it all so much harder.

“It’s about who can stay in the game and who nails those big moments. That’s what decides games. We have to be clear to be ready for those moments.”

Of course, how the speed of Origin football fares under rules that have pushed NRL games to breakneck pace is another matter entirely.

Our best comparison is the 2021 series. Queensland were beset by injuries and off-field dramas and were forced to name severely undermanned squads for the opening two matches.

Such hardship is normally a source of strength for the Maroons. Just the previous year they’d won the series with the “worst Queensland team ever”.

Often, they are most dangerous when they are wounded as if inspired by the taste of their own blood.

But the Maroon legend was helpless in the new world and the results were brutal. New South Wales won the opening game 50-6 in Townsville, which marked their biggest ever win and just the third time in Origin history a side had cracked the half century.

In Game II at Lang Park the Blues won 26-0, handing Queensland their worst ever loss at the Origin temple.

It turned established wisdom about Origin on its head to the point the Maroons copped some boos from the faithful before their dead rubber victory on the Gold Coast.

What raises fears of a repeat situation is that some of the hallmarks of Origin football — like tough defence on the goal line and grinding, set-for-set football where the loser is the team that blinks first and overcoming seemingly impossible odds because you will fight harder and longer than your more fancied opponents — are precisely what’s been in short supply this season.

The best Origin match in recent times was the brilliant 2024 decider, a game which stands as eternal proof that points and quality do not go hand in hand.

It took 65 minutes for the first try to be scored and the long wait for Bradman Best’s four-pointer only upped the stakes, the drama and the glorious catharsis when someone finally got over.

Not every game can be like that, but some games always should be. They should always be possible. The beauty of rugby league is its variety, but right now it feels like we’re only getting one sort of match, a sort that goes against everything that makes Origin great.

But the cause is not lost. The only thing this game does better than getting in its own way is saving itself from itself.

Throughout history, there have been matches that have risen above misguided rule changes or off-field madness to remind a jaded populace what this is all about.

Origin itself has served as that deliverance before, like in 1995 when Paul Vautin’s side stood tall in the midst of the Super League war, or the aforementioned 2020 series or the epic decider two years later which served as a correction to the lacklustre matches of the year before.

That is where hope springs eternal that this Origin series can be the morning star, last on the horizon before dawn breaks against the night, and a place where a lost game finds the best of itself again.

Rugby league needs a little bit of that old magic as part of a new legend to believe in, a reminder of what the game can be and a relief from what it has become.

Blues forward Cameron Murray debuted for New South Wales in 2018 and played through that broken 2021 series and the 2024 decider. He has experienced the best and the worst of Origin and has felt its ability to both define legends and destroy them.

While Murray wouldn’t be drawn on the current quality of the NRL, his belief in the power of Origin inspires the possibility that even now it can be immune to whatever trials and tribulations the game may face. To him, it always stands eternal, no matter what.

“I don’t think it’s changed much since I started, or even since Origin started. It’s unique because it transcends time and trends that happen in the NRL,” Murray said.

“Origin footy has stayed consistent. It’s just about competing as hard as you can.

“The people that want it most are the ones who get it. That’s been a consistent formula in who wins Origin and who doesn’t.”