KIWI international Greg Eastwood was forced to play a Queensland Cup match in Mackay on Saturday night and then back up in Canberra yesterday as punishment for missing a training session last week - but his five Brisbane teammates who endured a similar battle with fatigue after starring in Origin II were merely victims of their own success.

With the Broncos already without their four leading playmakers in Darren Lockyer, Peter Wallace, Michael Ennis and PJ Marsh, as well as suspended Test centre Justin Hodges, the five stars had little choice but to play.

It was a similar story in last weekend's clash against St George Illawarra when Brisbane were thrashed at WIN Stadium without their Origin representatives.

The NRL is likely to reschedule the Broncos' two byes next year so they fall on weekends before Origin to ensure they aren't disadvantaged by the absence of their best players.

That was how the draw was scheduled until this year. Yet unless stand-alone weekend Origin games are introduced, players will still have to back up after what are usually the most demanding matches of the season.

"You'd think after 28 years of trying they'd have it right by now, wouldn't you … that they'd have another plan," Broncos coach Wayne Bennett lamented after a 34-16 loss in which his side's injury toll only grew when former Test prop Joel Clinton suffered a broken collarbone.

"It's just so hard. You've got to have been there and experienced it to realise what it's like. I don't know any sport in the world that does what we do to our players. You've only got to see someone in a tennis grand slam - they don't have to come back each week and go through this but if they do, they get beat in the first round usually."

After dropping Eastwood for missing a training session last week when he slept through an alarm, Bennett had little choice but to recall him when Ennis - named to play at hooker - injured his knee in a training mishap on Saturday.

But with Eastwood having flown to Mackay to play for Wynnum in the Queensland Cup, it was too late to pull him from that match, so the 21-year-old utility played and then caught the first flight to Canberra yesterday.

"We were just looking for a replacement and it became pretty tough," Bennett said. "So we didn't tell Greg he was going to come down until after the game last night, because that was part of his punishment. He had to play in the state league for his breach of discipline and he played in Mackay. I'm told he went well, and he caught a flight down at 6am.

"He was happy to be here, he tried hard and he wasn't a part of the reason we found ourselves in the position we did. We had a lot of good players missing, we had guys backing up from Origin, they [Canberra] were on their game and we got a pretty ordinary start. So … it's no surprise we got beat by what we did."