Winger Valentine Holmes was the only premiership-winning player from the Sharks grand final winning team to gain selection with Graham hopeful more Cronulla players will get the nod for this year’s World Cup.

Graham has been playing sensational football throughout the NRL season and Origin series and hopes his continued success will see him earn a maiden green and gold jumper for the end of season tournament.    

“I’d like to think I’m an option there,” Graham said.

“There’s obviously a lot of football to be played after this Origin series at the back end of the year but the success we had last year ... you probably think if we do well again this year as a team, you’d like to see a bit more representation as a reward over the two-year period.

“But that’s out of our control, we’ve just got to keep going and keep trying.

“We want to have success at Cronulla regardless of any representation but we’d like to think that if we did go well again that we’d have a few more boys in there.”

And with NSW dominating the Maroons for much of the series, Graham is hoping fellow Blues teammates will also be given a chance to play for Australia in the world cup.

Graham, Jack Bird, James Tedesco, Mitchell Pearce and Josh Jackson are the Blues yet to play a Test and will be pushing for national selection.

Maroons players Cameron Munster, Dane Gagai, Dylan Napa, Josh McGuire and Coen Hess will all put their hand up in Wednesday night’s Origin decider in the hope of debuting for Australia later this year.

“Origin is very important and we’re approaching a bit of a change of the guard,” Meninga recently said.

“Younger legs are coming through and performing on the big stage (Origin) is everything.

“With guys like John (Thurston) retiring and we’re not sure where Cooper (Cronk) is at, we’re looking at all the positions for the future.”