Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy says State of Origin is taking a toll on fans who now hope their star players aren’t selected for the representative series because of the damage it can do to a club’s NRL premiership ambitions.
The former NSW coach said he was surprised when he met some Manly fans who told him they didn’t want players such as Blues brothers Brett and Glenn Stewart playing Origin.
“They told me they’d prefer their Manly players didn’t get picked in Origin because it affects their team,” he said.
“I’d never thought of it like that … it was a bit of a wake-up call for me.”
Bellamy said he couldn’t lay the entire blame for Melbourne’s shock run of five successive losses on the gruelling Origin campaign, but said the residue lasted long past the actual three games minus their stars.
“There’s a few other teams who’ve had an Origin hangover and this is probably the worst we’ve been,” he said.
The veteran coach has long been an advocate for Origin played on stand-alone weekends rather than midweek through the competition.
He said the ARL Commission needed to look at the scheduling of the series before it became a turn-off for fans and clubs.
Bellamy said he’d spoken to his AFL counterparts at clubs such at Collingwood and Hawthorn and had never met anyone who wanted their drawcards playing Origin, which was dropped back in 1999.
“The last thing we need is people out there, the supporters and people in clubs not wanting their players playing Origin because that’s the pinnacle of our game,” Bellamy said.
“But talking to fans, and not only Storm fans, they’re hoping the players they support are not in Origin and we don’t want to go down that track.”
“They need to look into that scheduling heavily and really soon to sort something out.
“The last thing I want is to be sitting in my chair in two or three years time and hoping my players didn’t get picked in Origin.”