Let’s get this straight right off the bat. The New South Wales Blues need Mitchell Pearce like a kick in the head. Some might have you believe, including the highly-respected Rugby League Week, that the Blues must go back to Pearce if they’re any chance of downing the mighty Queenslanders.

Before we go any further let’s apoligise for fuelling the State of Origin conversation only five weeks into the new NRL season.

It shouldn’t happen but it does.

Perhaps the story was written with RLW editors banking on an outraged reaction and furious fingers clicking all over the links just to read who and why a man still suspended for outlandish alcoholic behaviour should be ushered straight back into the sky blue jersey of NSW.

The81stMinute’s own Twitter account yesterday ran a poll asking if the Blues needed Pearce with 94% of voters saying, no he wasn’t required.

Canberra pairing Aidan Sezer and Blake Austin are back this week for the Raiders, South Sydney’s premiership-winner Adam Reynolds is expected back weeks before Origin I, Chad Townsend and James Maloney are linking well at Cronulla and Josh Reynolds has found form at Canterbury.

Why do we need Pearce?

Can we at least let these other guys play some actual footy and give them a chance to pick themselves?

Bloody hell; let’s give Jason Bell or Lincoln Withers a call before we reinstate Pearce.

Immortal Andrew Johns (a Sydney Roosters employee) believes Pearce is a red-hot chance of retaining his halves position.

“There’s a few young guys coming through and by that time Mitchell will be coming back and they’re all competing for two spots and there’s probably half a dozen guys in contention,” Johns said in early March.

“If Mitchell comes back and plays well, he’s definitely in the mix.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JVvT1cNtKFQ

Forget it.

Blues fans have had enough of losing and rightly or wrongly, Pearce has become the poster boy with all that’s wrong with the NSW Origin side.

Pearce is a wonderful club player and has given everything to try and get the Blues over the line in a representative career that has spanned almost ten seasons.

How many more years do we give him?

You can just see the Maroons and the verbal barrage that will ensue if things don’t go the Blues way.

Do we keep picking him until he’s thirty-seven and looking twenty years older than orange juice-drinking dad, Wayne?

Continuing to play Pearce is like saying, ‘If I live forever I’ll win the lotto eventually.’

But by then we’ll have lost an entire generation of potential star playmakers because we dared not pick them.

Ironically Blues coach Laurie Daley told RLW on Wednesday that nothing was concrete just yet.

“You’ve got Adam Reynolds out injured, Blake Austin and Aidan Sezer have been out as well, and Mitch is obviously suspended. It’s a matter of those guys, when they come back, playing really well as quickly as they can and trying to force their way into the team.

“It’s like with any position. You’ve just got to wait and see what happens and who’s available.”

It’s time to move on.

The Blues need fresh blood without the scars of previous series.

Now it’s just up to the other contenders to catch lightning in a bottle.

@woodward_curtis

Video source: Around_World youtube