Well, after months of anticipation and seemingly endless newspaper pages of speculation, the New South Wales Origin squad has finally been announced. It looks good to me.

There is just enough Origin experience in the team to ensure the preparation for this contest is on the mark. New skipper Robbie Farah and back-rowers Ryan Hoffman and Beau Scott will be the leaders of this group.

Throw interchange player Trent Merrin into this leadership group because I believe he will one day be a New South Wales captain. These guys will have to lead the way in camp, in training, and out on the playing field next Wednesday night.  Laurie Daley has also selected just enough youth in the side to give it a fresh look.

I like the young legs in the forwards. Aaron Woods, James Tamou, Josh Jackson, Boyd Cordner, David Klemmer, Andrew Fifita and Merrin are all mobile young firebrands who I think will excel together as a pack for many years to come.

2. Gambling on double 7 

The selection of two specialist halfbacks in the New South Wales line-up will make for interesting viewing. I hear many experts commenting on the fact that rugby league teams today no longer recognise the traditional positions of halfback and five-eighth.

Nowadays, the players selected in the number seven and number six jerseys are simply referred to as left-side and right-side playmakers. It must be right because if you watch the majority of teams in the NRL that is pretty much how the two halves operate. Each sticks to his own side of the field and runs his own plays with the ball runners in that zone. It must be the best way to do it because all the modern day coaches adopt this strategy.

I was asked recently if the half and five-eighth in today's rugby league teams do the same job. My response was, "If the seven and six are both doing the same job, then one of them must be doing it wrong". I accept, however, that I am very much a dinosaur when it comes to matters of modern day football.

What I do sense is that of all the possible halves combinations that were available, Coach Laurie Daley has selected what he believes to be the two best defenders. I'm pretty sure that's why he has selected Mitchell Pearce and Trent Hodkinson in his team for this all-important first  match.

3. Run them around and turn them around 

When you take the field for these Origin encounters you have to believe you are the better team and play the game like you are the better team. You need to dictate terms wherever possible. You have to trust your ability and the ability of your teammates. You need to be aggressive with your yardage game and sometimes that means moving the ball inside your own territory, looking for space down the edges of the field.

Wherever possible you must also be looking for offloads to keep the play moving and the opposition defence under pressure. Being prepared to use the ball to run your opponents around, is a real show of confidence and self belief. It also prevents them from settling into a routine and rhythm with their defensive line. The more you can make them chase you in defence, the less energy they will have to get back on kick-reception and assemble their structure for attacking raids of their own. You have to make them feel uncomfortable.

Kicking early in the tackle count to turn your opponent around is also a big play in these games. You have to show that you are prepared to win without the ball if necessary. Robbie Farah, Mitchell Pearce and Trent Hodkinson have to be aggressive with New South Wales kicking game. The rest of the Blues players need to support this kicking game with the very best kick chase. More often than not, the team that wins the kick chase metres, wins the game.

4. Origin impact time is upon us in the NRL 

I've been surprised at comments some analysts have made when assessing the impact Origin will have on various teams over the next eight weeks. As I have written previously I don't think our game is best served by playing NRL rounds without our best players or asking them to back up within days of Origin matches.

However that is the current system, so we just have to deal with it. So what do we have ahead of us? Rounds 11, 14 and 17 will feature just four matches a weekend with players chosen for Origin unavailable for their clubs. 11 of the 16 clubs (Dragons, Panthers, Roosters, Manly, Sharks, Storm, Titans, Warriors, Broncos, Canberra and Newcastle) will get their two byes in these matches. Rounds 12, 15 will feature seven matches a weekend, whilst round 18 will have six matches.

These three rounds will be played immediately after Origin. Parramatta, Souths and the Wests Tigers will get their two byes in these matches. Finally, North Queensland (Rounds 14 and 18) and the Bulldogs (rounds 12 and 17) will get one bye each in matches prior to Origin and matches after. Rounds 13 and 16 will be business as usual will all teams in action. Round 19, in mid-July, will therefore signal the commencement of the road to the finals with eight rounds to be played in the race for the final eight.

The next eight weeks will be, for many clubs, affected by Origin. It's a period of great disruption and pretty much a case of limiting the losses the best you can. For those clubs relatively unaffected it may open up opportunities to climb up the ladder. I will leave it you to judge the fairness of all this and the look of our game over  these Origin rounds.

5. The Dragons are the real deal

I've been fascinated with what I've seen of the Dragons over the past seven and a half rounds. The dramatic improvement on what they produced in their first two and half matches has been nothing short of extraordinary.

Like many, I've held back trying to assess their future prospects, waiting to see if they could maintain the rage. Their recent loss to Souths and the bounce-back victory over Canberra last weekend has convinced me that this is a very good rugby league team capable of matching it with the very best NRL teams this season. Whilst they have only scored 25 tries this season (the lowest of all 16 teams) I feel their attack is definitely improving.

They were scintillating at times against the Raiders on Sunday. You combine that with a defence that has conceded just 21 tries in 10 games (also the lowest of the 16 teams) there should not be a game this year that the Dragons cannot win. They have arguably the competitions best back row in Merrin, Thompson and Frizzell, a half and five-eighth in Widdop and Marshall whose kicking games are second to none, an outstanding fullback in Josh Dugan and 11 other players who compete on every play in every game now.

Paul McGregor and his staff have done an outstanding job moulding this squad into the team we have seen over the past two months. Given they already have seven season wins, finals football for the Dragons is close to being a formality, and they are deserving of the praise they are currently receiving.

6. New South Wales is not Queensland 

Renewed speculation that the primary NRL feeder competition in this state, the NSW Cup, may, in the near future, start to mirror its Queensland counterpart, the Queensland Cup, in regards its geographical spread really is fanciful.

The Queensland Cup features teams based in Cairns, Townsville, Mackay, Rockhampton, the Sunshine Coast, Gold Coast and Tweed Heads, as well as six teams from Brisbane and one from Papua New Guinea. The NSW Cup, on the other hand, features eight teams from Sydney and teams from the Central Coast, Illawarra, Hunter Valley and New Zealand.

The regional cities represented in the Queensland Cup all have populations well above 130,000 with the exception of Mackay (75,000) and Rockhampton (60,000). The largest cities in New South Wales not represented in the NSW Cup are Wagga Wagga (44,000), Albury (42,000) and Port Macquarie (37,000) and have nothing like the economic base of the major Queensland cities outside of Brisbane. Even Toowoomba with a population three times the size of Wagga Wagga, has not been able to field a team in the Queensland Cup since 2006.

There is no comparison between the decentralisation of the two states, or the economic strengths of the regional cities currently represented in the Queensland Cup and those not represented in the NSW Cup. Any contemplation of future changes to the NSW Cup needs to be done with a far greater understanding of the reality of these two indisputable facts.

Phil Gould is the Executive General Manager of the Penrith Panthers.