NRL boss Dave Smith says the league will consider standing down players from club games in the future if they make themselves unavailable for representative matches.
The league is under pressure to make a stand after almost 30 players declared their unavailability for last weekend's City-Country fixture in Dubbo and another 11 were scratched after being picked.
Many of those same players, including NSW State of Origin incumbents, have been named for their NRL teams this weekend.
The spate of pullouts came despite the league introducing a stand-alone representative round for the City-Country clash and Australia's trans-Tasman Test against New Zealand.
The NRL's head of football, Todd Greenberg, insists the rep round is here to stay, but Smith admits contracts might need to be tweaked to ensure it is.
"It's important for the game," Smith said on Fox Sports' NRL 360 on Wednesday night.
"All of our players coming up through the ranks want to play Origin, they want to play for their country or they want to play for City-Country.
"I think representative football is a very important part of the fabric of the game and it should be here to stay.
"However, if we're going to do it, we'll do it properly and people have got to buy into it and we've got to make sure, if we're setting the representative games up, everyone understands that it's important and the right players turn up for the right reasons.
"I accept that it (the system) is not perfect, but to lose representative football would be a big deal for the game and it closes down options."
Smith said standing players down from club matches the following weekend after they'd made themselves unavailable for representative selection was "one of the considerations" the NRL was facing.
"Because if you look at the contracts as they currently stand, they're written from the days when on the back of a representative game, you backed into an NRL game (on the same weekend)," he said.
"I think we need to change that.
"I think the break in the NRL season at round eight is much appreciated by most of the clubs.
"So everybody has to realise what it is we're trying to achieve and we've got to make sure there's buy-in and that the rules and the contract support that."
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