The State of Origin Series should be a standalone event.

Following another standard brutal and physical Game Two in the 2015 State of Origin series, what would be the general consensus of having a standalone series in the future?

In all honesty, it’s probably a good idea.

The NRL should do its uttermost to make it happen by reducing the regular season under the current flawed system of playing each team once and then randomly picking the remaining match-ups.

A 23-man squad would be ideal for a three-week series by itself with the starting line-ups only having to be announced two hours prior to kick-off. 

The NRL should adopt a conference style season with four teams to make up each conference.

Then teams would play each other in the conference twice, home and away, and everyone else once.

It would be an 18-round season plus three separate weeks of the State of Origin that we all love, followed by four weeks of the finals series.

A 25-week season. 

Doesn’t sound too bad now does it?

With Internationals to correspond after domestic footy, the season for professional rugby league players is easily long enough to keep fans satisfied.

So where would the conferences be situated across the nation?

Firsty, I’d suggest one made up of the North Queensland Cowboys, Brisbane Broncos, Gold Coast Titans, and New Zealand Warriors (because everyone knows that Queensland is plentiful with Kiwis).

Despite the would-be inevitable issue regarding fair conferences, this essentially is the reason why we have a salary cap in the league.

The whole idea of a salary cap is to keep a fair competition, which is the perfect reason to have conferences as can be seen in the NFL, NBA, and NHL in America, and recently taken up by the Super Rugby Championship in Australia.

The next conference would be the Melbourne Storm, Canberra Raiders, St George Illawarra Dragons, and Cronulla Sharks.

Then the South Sydney Rabbitohs, Sydney Roosters, Newcastle Knights, and Manly Sea Eagles, keeping fans of the already given rivalries in the competition something to look forward to each year.

The remaining bunch would be the Canterbury Bulldogs, Penrith Panthers, Wests Tigers, and Parramatta Eels.

It really would be a great spin on the NRL despite its governing body going backwards at the minute.

Every year the fans are guaranteed two rivalry games for those clubs where history is a factor.

Every team in the whole competition doesn’t play each other twice either which would be a nice change from today’s format.

The current system is undeniably unfair, which has me struggling to come to terms with why there isn’t more of an uproar about it.

How it works now basically is that we let all teams play each other once then randomly pick the rest of the 11 rounds. 

Does that not seem strange?

At least in a conference system, you know your games every year.

I get that playing each time twice is unrealistic, but what I don’t get is the fact that some teams play another team twice in the space of just four weeks.

It is a bit far-fetched and makes no sense - which is why it is time for the NRL to make a change for the better.