Gorden Tallis has weighed into the State Of Origin eligibility debate by claiming that the current rules are a farce and designed to allow both New South Wales and Queensland to keep selecting New Zealanders.
Tallis made the claims in his News Limited column and I tends to agree with what he has had to say.
With Luke Keary doing everything he can to play for Queensland, the state he was born in, Tallis has said that we should never have gotten into this situation in the first place. He believes that the current rules are too confusing and they should be simplified.
I have said for a long time now that I believe State Of Origin eligibility should be extremely simple. You play for the state you were born in.
If you were born outside of NSW or QLD, too bad. If you were born overseas, too bad.
State Of Origin is probably the only Rugby League representative fixture that you could bring in a hard and fast eligibility rule like this and not see it effect the quality of the contest at all.
If we need to bring in other representative fixtures for players who do not qualify for NW or QLD, that is find. But hurting the very concept of State Of Origin football to allow loopholes for a tiny minority of players only hurts the game in the long run.
