AFL PLAYERS keep telling us they want State of Origin. Now it's time they proved it.

Players must commit publicly to making it work and commit en masse - and that's only the starting point.

Players need to take control of the entire State of Origin project and make the prospect so exciting, so compelling and so viable that the AFL will be left with no choice but to endorse it.

And here's how they should do it.

The weekend of the NAB Cup Grand Final should be transformed into the AFL All-Star Weekend. Create two-and-a-half days jam-packed with on and off-field action, and pledge to allow fans to partially enter their world for that period.

To kickstart things, I'd suggest a massive breakfast for the public on the Friday morning of the All-Star Weekend, with hundreds of players in attendance and mingling among the crowd.

Why not move the pre-season draft from its December slot to this weekend, and hold it on Saturday morning? Imagine the interest from club supporters at this time of the footy season.

The AFL could use this weekend to launch the premiership season, too, and devise a ritzy function like no other to keep the corporates happy.

And, most importantly on this proposed All-Star weekend, we'd highlight the skills of the players in so many ways, and schedule four matches of high-quality football.

Using next year as a starting point to the AFL All-Star Weekend, the NAB Cup Grand Final would stay and be played on Saturday night.

On Friday night, the main State of Origin game would be played, which in year one would be Victoria against Western Australia.

Sunday would have two matches - South Australia v The Allies, followed by a clash of The Young Guns, where teams comprising players aged under 21 would round out the All-Star weekend.

Interspersed throughout the weekend's schedule would be dozens of fan-friendly events. A torpedo and banana-kick competition, clinics for the kids, BBQs for everyone, tours of the changerooms after training sessions and access to pre-match addresses by coaches.

Now, here's where the players need to be tough.

Any player who says he is injured and unable to play over the All-Star weekend must be ruled ineligible for round one of the home and away season. No exceptions.

Only then would we be convinced players would take State of Origin seriously.

The teams playing in the NAB Cup Grand Final would be without the players selected in the State of Origin teams. While tough and again, hard to cop for some, for the All-Star weekend to work to its optimum, such a rule must also be applied.

The loser of the Victoria-Western Australia match would be relegated to the Sunday slot in the next All-Star weekend, the winner of the South Australia-Allies game would be elevated to the prime Friday slot.

The weekend should be 'sold' separately by the AFL as a stand-alone package to the free-to-air TV broadcaster best prepared to pay big for it and make it a special part of the footy season.

AFL players chose to put the issue of State of Origin back on the public agenda when AFL Players Association president Luke Ball emerged from a board meeting last week to say his group had a "strong interest" in reintroducing it.

We have heard it so many times before that we are rightly sceptical every time this topic is raised.

Players have proven to be very good at talking about supporting a State of Origin series, yet are also very good at being unavailable when the time comes, leading the AFL to rightly scrap the annual scheduling of such games in 1999.

Opposition to bringing back State of Origin will come from many fronts. Most aggressive will be the coaches of the 18 clubs, for there is absolutely nothing for a coach to gain out of his players playing an exhibition match.

But they don't yet have a collective voice loud enough to silence the players.

So, it's up to the players. We'll soon find out if they really want State of Origin back on the calendar.

Or if they're just prepared to talk about it.

Follow Damian Barrett on Twitter at @barrettdamian

The views in this article are those of the author and not necessarily those of the AFL or its clubs