For years now, Australia’s State of Origin has represented a peak of rugby league. A trifecta of games steeped in history and prestige, it generates massive crowds and revenues for the sport and is generally seen by many to be the highlight of the calendar. Meanwhile, here in the U.K., we’re lucky to get a half-decent mid-season international game to get our pulses racing.

To that end, next month will see England take on France for what is sure to be another inconsequential friendly, with questionable benefits for all involved. The England team will get a run-out against a significantly weaker team they’re sure to beat, and the French team will probably tank another heavy loss, knocking their confidence and setting back their progress.

As you can probably tell, I find the idea of this game to be very flawed. It’s no one’s fault in particular, it’s just that France hasn’t had the resources long enough to compete with England, and there are no other teams close enough geographically to make a mid-season game viable. The Australians are sometimes testy about sending a club side for a World Club Challenge, so they’re hardly going to want to send their international team around the world to face England.

However, while the idea of England vs France mid-season is a flawed one for all concerned, I do agree that the Northern Hemisphere does need its State of Origin equivalent. A showpiece game which shows the best the Super League, and Europe, in general, have to offer. This isn’t taking into account the Magic Weekend, which is usually a showpiece event for the league, but is a dead concept walking now if IMG’s plans are anything to go by. For the record though, I would be in favour of keeping Magic as another means of showcasing the sport, but it doesn’t fit the remit I’m talking about today, so I’m going to set the topic aside for another time.

Pitch One: A Revival of the War of the Roses

Admittedly, the days of Yorkshire vs Lancashire games are before my time, so I have no personal nostalgia for the concept, but that doesn’t mean I don’t see the merits of the idea. It’s a ready-made concept with history behind it, while not quite on the same level as the State of Origin, it’s probably the closest thing we have conceptually to that series.

The problems, as I foresee them anyway, are twofold. One, the idea would lend itself better to a series of games, like Origin, and I’m not sure the calendar could fit three games in. It’s probably doable, but in this age of player welfare and restricted playing minutes, an extra three games could go down like a lead balloon in some quarters. Secondly, the game has now expanded beyond the M62 corridor (not as much as the powers that be would like, but it has) and as such this concept would exclude a percentage of the game and the league, it’s supposed to be showcasing.

Pitch Two – A Revamped Combined Nations Test Series

I may be in the minority here, but I really liked the Combined Nations (or ‘Exiles’) idea. It certainly proved to be more competitive than playing France every year anyway and gave Super League players from Australia or New Zealand who are cast out from their international sides the chance to play representative grade rugby in a whole new environment.

The trouble is though, the problems are the same as the Yorkshire vs Lancashire idea. If we want our own showcase, these things tend to work better as a series in my opinion, and as much as the French players could feature for the Combined Nations, they’re still likely to be overshadowed, leaving the French game to stagnate, which in turn, leaves England with less competition, weakening us too.

Maye the first problem could be worked through by staggering the games to be quite far apart, one near the start of the season, one in the middle and one near the end. This wouldn’t do wonders for team cohesion to have the games so spaced out, but it might allow for a wider variety of players to feature, as players impress throughout the season. I’m not sure, really. I’m an ideas guy, not a logistics guy.

Pitch Three – An Entirely New Concept

This one is a bit of a cop-out, I won’t lie. I couldn’t think of a fully-formed third option to include, just half-baked ideas and suggestions, but I didn’t think just two ideas would be quite enough, so here are a few suggestions I didn’t put as much thought into, and we can see if any of them have merit.

First up is an idea I’ve nicked from football: Super League winner vs Challenge Cup winner. The big flaw here is that sometimes a team wins both, in which case the runner-up of either competition could be used. Granted, this is likely to just be another meeting between two Super League sides, but if you dress it up correctly and give it a sense of occasion, you could be onto something.

The second idea for this section is somewhat more tenuous, and that’s a Combined Super League XIII vs another side from other leagues. I can’t quite put all the pieces together for this one. A Championship XIII is likely to not be strong enough to be a challenge, and an NRL XIII would be A: incredibly difficult to organise unless it was pre or post-season, and B: not exactly a showcase for European Rugby League if we’re having to invite the Aussies to come and play. I don’t know, feels like there’s a germ of an idea here, ah well back to the drawing board.

Written by Nathan Major-Kershaw (Site editor & Hull KR fan)