Opinion
Any good episode of serial entertainment, whether it’s your favourite bingeable drama or podcast or some reality show like Survivor or the US presidency, should leave a hook. A cliffhanger, a mystery, an unresolved grudge, it doesn’t matter – unfinished business is good for business.
Being a serial drama, Origin I served its purpose. The send-off of Kalyn Ponga was, and will be, heavily debated. Its effect on the match, gifting NSW a numerical advantage for the final 23 minutes, left a sense that the better team didn’t win. Perfect scriptwriting. Tune in next week.
It’s ironic, then, that the match officials who thought they were upholding the letter of the law, for the sake of integrity and brain health and other high motives, who should not have a single obligation to entertain, have acted in the interests of the entertainment industry.
They’ve given Queensland their grievance, again. They’ve left the old boys of league unhappy. The question of interstate sporting supremacy has been left unsettled. Origin 2026 has the vexation it demands. As the loser always says in the boxing ring, that ultimate grey area between sport and entertainment: I demand a rematch!
Referee Ashley Klein’s decision to send Ponga off rather than to the sin bin has been argued both ways. There was a measure of subjectivity to how hard Ponga hit Tolu Koula, what part of his body hit him, and how much duty of care he applied.
But watching the faces of the Origin veterans after the game – NSW partisans as much as Queenslanders – you could see something else at play.
It was not just gripey scepticism about all this “concussion” business and the heavy hand of regulators, gosh, even the spectre of political correctness. More, it was a scarcely disguised outrage that Origin – their Origin – has been debased and distorted. That rugby league’s most intense annual showcase has been bastardised. The unwritten rule has been broken: that Origin should be subject to different rules, Origin rules, because, well … it’s Origin.
When you tease them out, there are several contradictions at work. If seen as a purely sporting contest, Origin carries a special prestige and more far-reaching tribalism for those involved. It triggers high emotions. On the other hand, Origin attracts more rugby league tourists, the softer edge of viewership, people who aren’t rugby league but rugby league-adjacent, than any other event.
It must serve two interests pulling in different directions: the primal competitive urges of the initiated and the evangelical thrust of the game to sell itself to new audiences.
A concussion incident is caught in the middle of this pull between the purist and the tourist. The former sees heavy physical brutality as the essence of Origin. But the parent who watches league once a year, whom the league needs to win over if it’s going to keep expanding its reach, is not exactly keen to put their child’s head in the path of an incoming shoulder at Ponga-meets-Koula speed. And it’s not just the nervous mum or dad on that side of the argument: it’s anyone who cares about the long-term brain health of people who play this game.
It’s hard not to conclude that the old boys, in paid or unpaid commentary positions, feel Origin is too important to be spoilt by the rules of rugby league. Origin is already thought to be refereed differently, with the whistle kept in the pocket and a blind eye turned to ordinary infringements.
The big hits are also vital to the marketing package. But if you say that the entertainment, the point of the evening, is spoilt by the rules, that Origin should be a virtual free-fire zone for attacks to the head – the same arguments were put two years ago when Joseph Suaalii’s send-off (the send-off, rather than the act itself) “spoilt” another match – then you open up a kind of Enhanced Game of rugby league.
What would follow, as with the actual so-called Enhanced Games that have just taken place in Las Vegas, is participants signing a waiver on future claims of brain damage caused by blows in Origin games. As this brain damage would be indistinguishable from the damage incurred any other week, it’s practically impossible, not to mention morally unacceptable.
You can’t hold open the possibility that Jai Arrow’s condition might be connected to head knocks while also allowing a sphere of play, even if it’s just three games a year, when players’ brain health is completely disregarded.
Should Origin be officiated as if it is a singular, unique variant of rugby league? The reaction to Ponga’s send-off, that it allowed the Blues to win a game they probably deserved to lose, shows what I think is an excessive seriousness over the question of scoreboard justice.
This seemed to cause the most upset on both sides of the border: that the match deserved a different ending, with Queensland stretched beyond the end of their rope while NSW clinched one more chance than the many they botched. Yes, it did seem a bit unjust – but only if you ignore that Ponga’s send-off, for a shoulder charge, is not a part of the justice picture itself. The spectacle was only “ruined” because a Queensland player ruined it.
Is justice ever finally served? Across all sports, unrealistic expectations have been raised by technology. Video officiating, which is meant to reduce contention over decisions, has only intensified it. The nearer we get to perfection, the further it eludes reach. The slower the motion of the replay, the wronger the wrong, the deeper the unhappiness, the more serious the over-seriousness.
This is heresy to say out loud, but rugby league, even Origin, is only a game. How much does it matter that Queensland lost when they were the better team? How much does it matter that exhaustive video replays raise more questions than they answer? How much does it matter if the final scoreboard didn’t reflect sporting justice?
Here’s what remains. Klein’s decision to march Ponga was certainly defensible. No serious sport can drop its rules and let people whack each other in the head just because Origin is its top-rating show of the year.
Sure, the send-off changed the result. The way the Blues were playing, even 12 Queenslanders were too many for them to cope with. So the better team might not have won. Too bad.
The result isn’t a matter of life and death; brain health is.
If this was WWE and the whole thing was staged, it couldn’t be improved upon. The plot has just thickened. The irony is that Klein didn’t need to suspend the usual rules and turn Origin into an Enhanced Game. He just applied the law as he saw it. In doing so, he couldn’t have scripted a more compelling hook to finish episode one. Roll up, roll up for episode two.
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Malcolm Knox is a journalist, author and columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.
