State of Origin breaks even the greatest. New rules are set to make it even faster and harder
When State of Origin coaches Laurie Daley (NSW) and Billy Slater (Queensland) take their seats in the coaches’ box at Accor Stadium on May 27, it will be their first match as coaches. NRL’s new rules.
The enlarged bench and increased six-rep mandate has put a strain on NRL coaches; some of them are still making the wrong substitutions two months into the season. So Loz and Billy must cope with the added pressure of faster gameplay and more tactical options in the competition that attracts a large audience every year.
Their ruthless agenda is as follows: Origin I – the coach’s first game of the year and under new rules; Origin II – loser must win to tie the series; Origin III – win the title.
As current Australia coach and former Maroons mentor Kevin Walters said: “Tactically you have to be very smart in Origin, even more so now. The pace of Origin is super fast, faster than the NRL and the new six rules make you wonder how can Origin be faster?”
Daley won’t let Craig Bellamy help either, as he devotes his attention to the struggling Storm. Bellamy, a former Blues coach, said: “We all have planned rotations of who comes out when and who replaces them, but often there are things you can’t plan for and those are more likely to happen in Origin.”
Daley will have NRL assistants Matt King and Brett White, as well as Boyd Cordner, but the head coach must be the final decision maker on tactical changes and reading the body language of exhausted players.
Slater will also be without Josh Hannay, who is now with the Titans, but he also said this: reporter assistants “will be the same as last year.” Asked how he would deal with the new rules, Slater said: “You always have to adapt, but you also always have to remember what works in football. You can’t forget the fundamentals of the game.”
Who is Daley? Returns to Origin in 2025 He admits the game has accelerated quickly after Brad Fittler’s six-year tenure and Michael Maguire’s one-year stint.
“It’s been even quicker this year with six more penalties being taken instead in the defensive half of the pitch,” Daley said. “There’s probably about three more subs in that area, which means the rest time you get to kick from the penalty to the sideline is taken out of the game. That’s probably 40 seconds times three. Two minutes of extra possession time doesn’t sound like a lot, but that’s it for a football player.”
Walters agrees that Daley and Slater will be under pressure and points out that an expanded six-man bench could offer plenty of options.
“Them [the rule makers] it took away the utility player,” he said, referring to players such as NSW’s Connor Watson, a highly underrated hooker who can switch multiple positions.
“Substitutions are normally similar, centre-to-centre. However, using a reserve full-back as one of your four subs can impact your centre-forward’s rotation. Both Brisbane players, Payne Haas [now unavailable for NSW] and Pat Carrigan [Queensland] He can play for 80 minutes, but who else can?
“Penrith’s Isaah Yeo [NSW] He can usually play in the 80’s but this year he is spellbound. “You need to carry two to four important players in the forwards and many clubs do not have these players.”
However, expanded use of the six-repeat rule means some NRL clubs, such as Penrith, do not carry a centre-forward on the bench because improvisational play in quick sets can make “settlers” obsolete.
Origin, on the other hand, is old-fashioned football, which means attacking each other forward with all the finesse of bull elephants during mating season. A coach who chooses young mobile forwards instead of dominant central players may be exposed. NSW are expected to have at least three center players on their six-man bench.
Walter’s two-series opponent, Fittler, is aware of the difficulty of making the right substitution after heavy criticism was leveled at him when he used Nicho Hynes as center in Game 1 in 2023. “Freddy” Fittler also shares with Walters the concern that the six speeds up the ball, reducing coaches’ control over the game.
Ball possession speed has averaged around 3.5 seconds for five years, but is now slightly higher at 0.07 of a second. He said of his time in charge of the Blues: “We aimed to get Queensland into the five-second ball game. Now it’s the other way around. You can’t control a game the way you want. The team that thinks on the run wins. Success in Origin is often down to the personnel, even more so now.”
Ricky Stuart, who is also a former Origin coach, said he was confident Daley and Slater would cope with the new rules, saying: “They watch a lot of football and will have an idea of the new rule and scenarios involving the six-man bench.”
Sometimes, the pent-up emotion in Origin is so significant that even the most experienced coach is powerless to stop a negative trend. Daley said he was thrilled with NSW’s preparation for last year’s decider in Sydney, telling the team: “Excellent preparation means excellent performance.”
But when Jarome Luai curled a flurry of strikes into the Maroon goal to make it seven-a-side, it was as if the NSW players collectively thought: “This wasn’t supposed to happen.”
The Blues never recovered and Queensland, driven by the need to honor the passing of captain Cameron Munster’s father, were unstoppable at the crease.
Walters admits he experienced a similar feeling of helplessness on the eve of a match in Perth in 2019, when TV cameras showed Maroons players trying to free a football stuck in the ceiling netting in the AFL-designed dressing room.
“Now that I think about it, I’m angry,” he said. “As a coach, you know where they need to be mentally in the minutes before going into the game. I really don’t know if any words of wisdom would help at this late stage. This is the players’ time.”
Fittler had that experience as a player in the decider in Brisbane in 2001, when Allan Langer was brought in from England to play at halfback. The prevailing narrative has always been “Alf’s” comeback that inspired the Maroons to victory, but it was also Fittler’s collapse in his farewell game.
“After the match I was going to quit representative football,” Fittler recalled. “I was having a bad year at the Roosters but my second Origin game was probably one of the best games I’ve ever played. “As captain I had my own room in Brisbane. I felt terrible. [centre Ryan Girdler] He came to my room to join me to catch the bus to the place. I almost cried in front of him. I fell to the ground, feeling terrible. We started well but I couldn’t help it. We lost badly [40-14]. “I had a mini crisis.”
Origin is now a formidable beast, faster and with more complex options. It consumes even the largest.
Fittler said of his crisis: “I think it was fear of failure. My season at the Roosters wasn’t very good. It was like everything was out of my control.”
Roy Masters is the Sydney Morning Herald’s Sports Columnist.Connect via email.
