Full Crowd Of 50,000 Expected For State Of Origin, The World’s Greatest All-Star Game

For rugby league fans, it doesn’t get much better than State of Origin. It’s the toughest, fastest, most competitive, most dramatic and you get the message—it stops the rugby league world. Origin might be the only all-star game in world sport that actually matters, where all the league’s best players are on show and the result is vital. Tomorrow will be a decider, too, the third game in a series that is currently tied one all.

Just when you thought the game couldn’t get bigger, Queensland Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk announced last Friday that, for the first time in months, all COVID-19 restrictions will be relaxed and a full crowd will be allowed in at Brisbane’s iconic Suncorp Stadium to see the game.

Australia has coped better than most with the pandemic—aided, of course, by being miles away from anywhere—but that isn’t to say that they weren’t affected. All sports stopped, and when they came back, fans were replaced by cardboard cutouts like everywhere else. For so long, it seemed like Origin 2020 might end up as something of an afterthought, shunted to the end of the season, or not even happen at all.

Now, we’re all set for a Game Three, State of Origin decider, with favorites New South Wales traveling to underdogs Queensland, with the most famous stadium in the sport packed to the rafters for the first time in forever, as the year’s final act. It’s a big deal, to say the least. 

Suncorp Stadium, or Lang Park, as tragics such as myself still call it, is rugby league’s mecca. Sure, the game may have been founded in England’s cold North, but it has been oriented around Australia for decades now, and no stadium can claim as many memories and so many great figures as Lang Park.

For this journalist, raised on imported Micron Video VHS tapes of 90s Origin, there can be no venue more vaunted, no fixture more important. The Maroon—mah-rown, as Australians always pronounce it—of the Queensland jerseys crashing into the Blues of New South Wales, in that slightly grainy technicolor quality that only came from watching on a video that had been taped over and copied several times en route from Rockhampton to Rochdale. I watched them over and over, down to the exotic Australian adverts, learned the names to heart.

For Queensland, there was Allan Langer and later Darren Lockyer, players so inspirational that it seems an afterthought to include their first names. Langer & Lockyer meant more to my childhood than Bertie & Ernie, or Batman & Robin, or any duo you care to name. There was Mal Meninga, a behemoth, and Martin Bella, bald, moustachioed, head taped and permanently on the verge of chucking a punch at someone. There was the legend of the Emperor of Lang Park, Wally Lewis, the greatest player my father ever saw, who was mentioned by the commentary in every game. Queensland were tough as old boots.

New South Wales seemed impossibly glamorous. Laurie Daley and Rickie Stuart were wizards, every inch the match of Langer and Lockyer. Paul Harragon, “the Chief”, smashing into lines of Maroon jerseys. Brad Fittler was young, but soon imperious, later joined by Andrew Johns, who had the ball on a string. Andrew Ettingshausen, who gave the air that he’d walked off the beach and straight onto the field, was nicknamed ET and looked like an alien compared to the men I saw fighting for the ball in the mud in England.

“Watch out Queensland, the Blues are on their way!”

Time might have dimmed the memories, but not Origin. For the uninitiated, it’s worth explaining that, through State of Origin, rugby league manages to boast something that no other sport has: a competitive all-star game. The game’s best competition, the National Rugby League (NRL), splits across state lines between New South Wales and Queensland, and anyone eligible to play for Australia will invariably turn out for one of the two. Give or take a few Kiwis, Brits and Pacific Islanders, this is the best of the best. And it really, really matters. 

“We’ve seen plenty of this in Origin, and this is one of the best”, exclaimed commentator Ray Warren as the first scrum of Origin 1995 exploded into a 13-a-side brawl. That Origin would end up in a fight was almost inevitable. It mattered that much. The concept of Origin thrived because of the “mate against mate” aspect: guys would play for the same club in the league, but against each other in Origin. It went deep. These days, you don’t see much of it, though credit to Payne Haas and Tino Fa’asuamaleaui for doing the decent thing last week and indulging in a bit of 1990s revivalism. 

As we go into tomorrow’s game, New South Wales appear to have turned the tide of the 2000s and wrought back control. Between 2006 and 2013, the Blues won just once, faced with an all-star of all-stars Queensland side that redefined dominance. Should NSW win tomorrow, it will be three in a row and much hand-wringing in Queensland will ensue. 

Whatever the result, it will give us a semblance of normality in a sporting year that has completely lacked it. Full stands at Lang Park as the Maroons take on the Blues, the series on the line. Come ten past nine tomorrow morning, I shall be in heaven.

State of Origin, Game Three kicks off at 7.10pm in Brisbane, 9.10am UK time, 4.10am in New York and 1.10am in Los Angeles. You can watch it on WatchNRL around the world.