ARE you feeling the State of Origin buzz yet?
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No?
Neither am I, which is a bit of a worry when we're only a few days out from the teams being named for game one.
There's the traditional build-up to an Origin match, starting with the sides being announced and going right through to the kick-off, but there's also the build-up to the build-up, which goes for a few weeks, maybe a month.
And that's been too boring for words, so I won't waste any here describing it.
Queensland coach Billy Slater is not a controversial figure.
Backed up against a wall, he'll fire up, but no-one is backing anyone up against any walls.
NSW coach Michael Maguire has, by design, been invisible. He has no doubt been doing plenty in terms of preparation, behind the scenes, but he's been saying nothing publicly. We've heard more from Tibetan monks.
Hopefully the interest will ramp up when the teams are named, but the problem there is that we have an extraordinarily long list of star players unavailable due to injury.
The team announcements are inevitably going to highlight that, so the interest is going to centre on which players get their Origin chance because the bigger names are out.
There surely can't be any doubt that Nicho Hynes will be the NSW halfback. He's the last man standing, with Nathan Cleary and Mitchell Moses off the scene.
If everyone was fit, Hynes should be in the halves anyway - at five-eighth with Cleary at halfback.
After being thrown on late and out of position off the bench in his only previous Origin game he deserves a genuine chance to show what he can do at this level.
Multiple commentators are picking Cody Walker in their Blues side at five-eighth, but to me that just shows how slim the pickings are.
Walker was justifiably awarded man of the match in game three of last year's series, which the Blues won 24-10, but that was in a dead rubber after the Maroons had won the first two games.
Dead rubbers mean nothing and statistics prove it. I've written here multiple times and as recently as last week that a win in a dead rubber is not a pointer to success the following year.
But, apart from and probably even more important than that, Walker's club side South Sydney has been in the horrors since midway through last season and Walker's form has been down through that period.
Plus, he's now 34 years old.
This is not his time. There are other options.
It's time to go away from James Tedesco at fullback as well.
Dylan Edwards deserves that spot. His claims to it should no longer be ignored.
There's a school of thought that Tedesco should be retained because as the NSW and Australian captain his experience becomes even more important when the Blues are missing so many other experienced players.
Rubbish.
Pick the best players first and then pick a captain from those.
I guarantee there will be someone in the team who can lead it and lead it well.
This is a new era and Maguire should treat it that way.
He shouldn't feel obliged to pick anyone and as I've also written here before if he picks Tedesco and it doesn't work out well, then the difficult question of when to axe him becomes Maguire's problem.
If you look at the Souths team that won the 2014 NRL grand final under Maguire's coaching, you get a great idea of the type of players he likes.
It was a mixture of big names and some not-so-big names who were hard workers and whom Maguire knew could do a job for him, the latter including Jason Clark and Kyle Turner off the bench.
Cameron McInnes has really found himself as a player in the latter part of his career with Cronulla and appeals as that Maguire-type player now.
Maguire had three Burgess brothers in that Rabbitohs team - Sam and George as starters and Tom off the bench.
He liked the big bodies creating havoc and when you've got three that good you find spots for all of them.
Tom Hazelton is one of those big bodies at the Sharks. He has got power, athleticism, skill and try-scoring ability to go with his size.
He must be on Maguire's radar and I'll be surprised if he doesn't pick him.
Maguire had no hesitation in putting Api Koroisau in at hooker for the suspended Isaac Luke in that grand final-winning side and Koroisau is another player whom the Blues coach knows can do the job at Origin level.
The fact so many stars are unavailable for both sides - Cleary, Tom Trbojevic, Cameron Murray, Bradman Best and Kotoni Staggs for NSW and Cameron Munster, Kalyn Ponga, Tino Fa'asuamaleaui, Tom Flegler and Tom Gilbert for Queensland are just some of them - puts the Origin series under a bit of pressure.
Particularly when you consider how good the club football is this season. It's been fantastic.
You no longer get a genuine war of words to increase the tension leading up to Origin games and create a mood that sinks into the fabric of the contest because those sort of personalities no longer seem to exist in rugby league.
And there's no longer the threat of a good old-fashioned punch-up, for those Neanderthals who would still be attracted by that prospect.
I'm not one of them, by the way.
So the game is there to be judged purely on its quality and Origin might not turn out to be any better than a top-shelf club game in 2024.
Which is still pretty good, but just not how we know Origin at its finest.
