It was supposed to be the day rugby league reached out to touch the lives of 320 children who were victims of the Victorian bush fires.

Instead it was a cold slap in the face as the NSW State of Origin team kept training at Werribee when they were supposed to be at Visy Park in Melbourne conducting a coaching clinic with kids who travelled over two hours to meet the stars.

The Blues arrived over 90 minutes late for the engagement which left some kids who had travelled from Kinglake, one of the worst affected areas by February's bushfires, just 40 minutes instead of two hours to mingle with the players.

The Queensland team travelled more than two hours from Nagambie to make the event on time, shifting their arrival back half an hour to accommodate the tardiness of NSW.

Melbourne Storm officials organised the coaching clinic well in advance and were privately seething the Blues had treated the event with such contempt to continue training.

Maroons halfback Johnathan Thurston said it was "definitely" poor form by the NSW players to neglect the grassroots of the game, particularly after what the children had been through.

"If they are staying here in Melbourne why are they two hours late," said Thurston.

"This is grassroots. I think they could have been here on time."

Storm chief executive Brian Waldron was far from impressed, particularly as the club's own coach Craig Bellamy was responsible for keeping the Blues on the training field instead of at a promotion for rugby league in Victoria.

"It would have been nice to have them here on time," said Waldron.

"It's not ideal that they were not here on time but these things happen some times.

"You can make a big deal of it but it's not going to change what's happened.

"We just make sure it does not happen in the future."

NSW veteran Craig Wing apologised on behalf of the team and said they were disappointed in themselves for the delay and had underestimated how long it would take them to drive from training to the city - a trip estimated to take only 40 minutes.

"We are very sorry about that and a little bit disappointed in ourselves," said Wing.

"We were training pretty hard and we just took a bit longer in training than we expected and had to high-tail it out here.

"I think we're staying a fair way away as well and we kind of misjudged how long the bus ride would take.

"All the boys have made an effort to stick around a bit longer, sign a few autographs and put as many smiles on faces as possible."

The NSW Rugby League later "fined itself" $10,000 for the incident, with the money to be distributed to the eight schools who took part. NSWRL general manager Geoff Carr said he was far from happy with what transpired.

"As far as we are concerned it's the last thing we wanted, to keep these kids, particularly after what they've been through, to keep them waiting.

"There's always a difficult balancing act in all this between preparing the team for the biggest game of the year and fulfilling a myriad of commitments that we are obligated to do.

"We had some changes to the team which were beyond our control of the team and obviously this morning's training session was deemed to be pretty important and went a bit over time.

"Being stationed at Werribee added to the logistical problems."

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