Why it’s time for NRL coaches to return to State of Origin

When the statistics are wheeled out, the most successful State of Origin coach in the sport's history is Mal Meninga.

That's not going to come as a surprise.

He coached through Queensland's incredible dynasty, racking up 20 wins from 30 games as part of the incredible eight series in a row that the men from north of the Tweed took out.

But that record always comes with the asterisk.

The asterisk that a team featuring Billy Slater, Greg Inglis, Darren Lockyer, Cooper Cronk, Johnathan Thurston and Cameron Smith is going to go down as the best of all-time, and that, in realistic terms, you or I probably could have been coaching and they still would have won most of those series.

We never saw anything like it before they got together, and we will never see anything like it in our lifetimes again. It's a once-in-a-lifetime occurrence that six players who could all have claims to being Immortal-level players over the coming decades just happened to play for the same state in the same era.

Maybe, you could argue, the famous St George Dragons team that won 11 straight could hold a candle to them, but that wasn't representative football, and it was a totally different, non-salary cap era.

Don't get me wrong, Mal Meninga understood Origin football. He is one of the greatest Queenslanders to ever play the game, an Immortal in his own right, and he certainly wouldn't have that next to his name if he didn't understand what it meant to wear that famous Maroon shirt.

But the fact of the matter is, he was just that. The figurehead to get the team fired up and ready for battle.

His support staff, led by one of the game's smartest ever operators in Michael Hagan, is widely credited with the actual on-field strategy, and you could hazard a guess that some of the best spine players to ever exist also had a fairly large say in the way the Maroons played the game all those years.

That's not to say former players don't become coaches, but the two 'best' coaches for lack of a better word since the end of the Meninga dynasty have both been full-time NRL coaches.

If you run the rule over the coaches since the end of the dynasty, Laurie Daley (2016-2017 and 2025-current), Brad Fittler (2018-2023), Michael Maguire (2024) for New South Wales, and Kevin Walters (2016-2019), Wayne Bennett (2020), Paul Green (2021) and Billy Slater (2022-present), the two standouts for what they got out of their football sides have been Maguire and Bennett.

Maguire was able to do the Blues' job as a one-off after coaching New Zealand to an incredible win in the Pacific Championships over Australia, and before he was poached by the Broncos to replace Walters at the end of 2024, while Bennett did the job as a one-off in the wild 2020 season, when Origin was played after the NRL campaign, thanks to COVID.

What Bennett did with that 2020 team is the stuff of legend.

With all due respect to Corey Allan, Brenko Lee, Edrick Lee, Phillip Sami and Dunamis Lui, they are not Origin-level players even at their peak.

The team was widely dubbed the worst Queensland team of all-time, and yet, getting personal for a moment, I can remember telling anyone who would listen before the series started that Queensland would win because of Wayne Bennett.

The fact that Kalyn Ponga took no part in the series with injury, and that Queensland had a host of other injuries, as well as their golden generation all retired, should have seen the Blues clean sweep.

But they lost Game 1 to an AJ Brimson-inspired Maroons in Adelaide, won Game 2, then went up north and couldn't find a way to get the job done.

The hangover for the likes of Nathan Cleary and Damien Cook out of that series last year, with people doubting their ability, but the truth of the situation was that Brad Fittler, a coach who struggled in his one shot at NRL coaching with the Roosters, was simply bettered by Wayne Bennett.

Fast forward to 2024, and Fittler, who had left the role, was replaced by Maguire.

A premiership-winning coach with a record of getting the best out of his players for short periods, before his training methods became too much.

Or at least, that's how the story went at the Rabbitohs, before he went to the Wests Tigers and, as many have done at the joint-venture over the years, struggled.

But the NSWRL saw something in Madge, and with good reason, given what he had achieved with the Kiwis just the year before.

Maybe on paper, the Blues had the stronger team, but after dropping Game 1 at home, it should have been curtains for the Blues.

Instead, they went to Melbourne and dominated in front of 90,000, then went up north and played a ridiculously good game of rugby league, with Mitchell Moses and Dylan Edwards leading the way to an incredible series win.

You could argue the selections made by Maguire and Bennett until you're blue in the face, but the bottom line is, successful NRL coaches understand what makes a successful representative team, they pick their squads that way, and then have them execute.

That is exactly what happened in 2020 and 2024, both against the odds. Bennett, for the entire series, and Maguire, for that famous decider played in the Queensland capital.

Outside of that, strategy, bench rotations, squad selections and everything in between haven't looked all that good for either state.

Billy Slater has certainly out-pointed Brad Fittler and Laurie Daley since he took over the reigns of the Maroons, but he was hammered by Maguire in 2024.

You only need to look at Game 1 of this year's series to raise an eyebrow for Slater.

That he moved Kurt Capewell to the centres, and brought on non-impact forward Trent Loiero with 15 minutes to go instead of utilising his six-man bench where a specialist outside back in Gehamat Shibasaki, who he took a massive punt on to include in the 2025 series, was sitting, made very little sense.

In truth, it was not the send off probably cost Queensland the game. The Blues attacked freely down their right-hand side, with halfback Nathan Cleary making Capewell look silly.

Up until that point, Laurie Daley's, let's call them interesting selections, looked as if they were going to backfire. Mitch Barnett played like a guy who has had a handful of games in the last 12 months, Stephen Crichton carried his club form across, and the Blues made countless errors.

That follows a series last year where the Blues won Game 1 with a strong performance, but then were out-manoeuvred by Queensland, who made a series of brave selections under Slater, including dropping captain Daly Cherry-Evans. In the end, it worked, with Tom Dearden playing the game of his life in a decider in Sydney, but it just as easily could have backfired for Slater.

There is no doubt an Origin coach needs to 'get' Origin, but it's also potentially time for both the NSWRL and QRL to move away from having ex-players with little to no full-time coaching experience, particularly as the game gets faster and goes to the six-man bench this year.

I'm not for a moment suggesting we need to go back to full-time current club coaches, but there are enough examples floating around the game of guys who have had coaching success, probably looking for a way to get back into head coaching, who would be perfect for the Origin arena.

Ivan Cleary, when he steps down from the clipboard at the Panthers at the end of 2027, could well force the QRL to react and move the needle back in this direction.

He will, or at the very least, should, if appointed, out-point Billy Slater, or whoever his replacement is, if he winds up at the Melbourne Storm, by a significant distance.