Knights NRLW halfback Jesse Southwell has urged the NRL to play a Women's Origin game in Newcastle, predicting it would likely break the attendance record set in North Queensland this month.
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Southwell, who is preparing for Newcastle's first NRLW game against the Dragons at McDonald Jones Stadium on Saturday, made her Origin debut last month at Parramatta and steered NSW to victory in the second fixture a few weeks later in Townsville.
After the second game at Queensland Country Bank Stadium, which attracted a record Women's Origin crowd of 18,275, the Townsville and Newcastle mayors jointly called for their cities to become regular hosts of the matches.
Game one of this year's expanded series was played at CommBank Stadium, while one-off fixtures in the past have been held in Canberra and at North Sydney Oval.
The NRL has indicated a likely expansion to three matches like the men's Origin series, and Newcastle's McDonald Jones Stadium appears a logical host venue given its capacity of about 30,000.
"It's always such an honour just to play for your club here, so I couldn't imagine playing for your state here," Southwell said of potentially running out in a Sky Blues jersey at her club's home ground.
"Obviously you've got to be good enough to get picked, but I just think it would be so cool to play an Origin game here."
Newcastle was due to host the third game of the men's Origin series in 2021 due to the coronavirus breakout in Sydney, but the NRL scrapped the fixture two days after announcing it following pressure from public health officials.
Southwell, a born and bred Novocastrian, remembers the disappointment of the city losing the historic match, which the NRL moved to Queensland, and reckons hosting a women's Origin would go some way to making up for it.
"It's footy heartland here. Everyone loves it," the 18-year-old said.
"I'm pretty sure that there would be a crowd of over 30,000 people. Everyone loves footy here, loves sport here.
"We had whispers of the men's Origin game here in that COVID period and then it got taken away from us.
"So to see that would be so cool."
A breakout star of the NRLW in her debut campaign last year, helping Newcastle to their inaugural women's title, Southwell, like other Origin players, has taken issue with the timing of the Origin games.
The fixtures were scheduled more than a month after the women's state competitions had finished and only a week after NRLW clubs kicked off pre-season training.
The quality of the first Origin was short of expectations and Southwell believes the NRL needs to find an alternative place in the calendar to improve the product.
"I have nothing to do with all that stuff, but I really do hope so because it is very difficult for girls to get their head in a game and get their eye into a game when you haven't played footy for six weeks, eight weeks," she said.
"I just don't think they'd ever do that in the men's game.
"Origin is the pinnacle of our sport, [and] playing it off the back of no footy is just something you would never see in the men's game. So I think it's kind of disappointing the way that they've done that.
"But it would be hard for them to schedule it in. With the NRLW season being so late in the year, it would be very difficult.
"But in my opinion, if they want Origin to be what it is supposed to be, and what it is in the men's game, I do think it needs to be rescheduled and put somewhere where girls have played a lot of footy or have footy under their belt."
Queensland controversially won this year's two-game series on points aggregate after claiming an 18-10 win in game one and losing the second match 18-14.
The NRL has been widely panned for playing only two games by both players and the media, and Southwell hopes the series will be expanded to three games in 2024.
"You can't leave it at two. You can't have one winner and one loser," she said.
"It doesn't make sense to me, because you haven't got a winner."