Phil Gould has offered a sobering assessment of the State of Origin build-up, suggesting that Tom Trbojevic's future at fullback may effectively be over, that Payne Haas could be back for Origin earlier than the public fears, and that rugby league's rolling injury list is the product of a game that has outgrown the way its players are being prepared.
Speaking on 100% Footy as Laurie Daley prepares to name his first Blues squad, Gould was blunt about the state of the New South Wales casualty ward — and equally blunt about the structural reasons he believes are feeding it.
On Haas, Gould pushed back firmly against the 6-to-8-week medial ligament timeline being attached to the Broncos prop. "If he's out, I just don't think he'll be out. I think he'll come back," Gould said. "Medials, when you first do them, your knee feels really wobbly, but they actually get better pretty quickly. So I'd be surprised if he's actually out for 6 to 8 weeks. I reckon he'll be all right."
Pushed on whether Haas could make Origin I, Gould split the difference. "I think he'll be there for game two. Look, I'd be surprised if it's an 8-week injury. Unless he's totally ripped it off the bone, which I don't know if he has. I'm not a doctor, obviously, but I just don't think it'll be that bad."
It was on Trbojevic where Gould's tone turned more personal — and more difficult. The Manly fullback has been sidelined again, and Gould suggested the moment he was seriously hurt this time was the moment he finally looked like his old self.
"The best story about Turbo this year was the fact that he was running so well and he did look like he'd freed up in his footy," Gould said. "So look, there's so much devastation around it. I think it's probably the end of him playing this level football at fullback."
Asked whether Trbojevic might yet return in a representative jersey later in his career, Gould was hopeful but realistic. "I hope I'm completely wrong, and I hope he can come back and he can play fullback for Manly and he can put on a Blues jersey one day, but it doesn't look like his body's able to keep up with what he's doing."
"He's without doubt in the best 34 players in this competition. So he needs to be there."
Gould's broader frustration was reserved for the state of the competition. With injury lists at every NRL club only seven rounds into the season, Gould argued the issue was not random. It was systemic.
"It's got to be the way the game's played now — it's as fast as it's ever been," he said. "We're getting shorter off-seasons. They're trying to cram more into those off-seasons. And this six-again interpretation was thrown at them a week before game one. We didn't know what the load was going to be or how the games were going to be played till a week before game one. So we haven't really trained for what the game ended up being, or what the game is at the moment."
"I think it's a culmination of year after year after year shorter off-seasons, longer breaks for players, and trying to cram too much or not enough into the off-season to prepare them for the type of football that they're about to play."
Gould's prescription is radical by modern standards: shorter home-and-away seasons, a deeper representative calendar, and a genuine off-season every three or four years.
"We need shorter domestic seasons. We don't need 27 weeks to find the best eight teams," he said. "I think we need to have no more than 18 or 20 competition rounds to find our top eight. That's all we need."
"There needs to be an off-season every three or four years where they do nothing. They finish on grand final day and they have a break and they're back training on the 1st of November to get ready for an end of February or March kickoff. We're just burning the candle at both ends every year."
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*Originally published on [Rugby News Online](https://rugbynews.online/article/phil-gould-tom-trbojevic-fullback-payne-haas-blues-origin-injury-crisis-a065b8). Visit for full coverage.*
