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Published: June 22nd 2008
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Now as previously mentioned in our other blogs, we have of course been keeping up to date on the pantomime, sorry, football season back home. We have checked the scores of our beloved Hearts each week and comfort from the fact that we have not been there to witness some of our performances, and yet more comfort still that we have been spared the many ingenious and witty comments from the Wee (flair) Team. Starved of a successful and entertaining team in Maroon to support, I have transferred a small part (albeit temporarily) of my allegiances to the Brisbane Broncos, of Queensland. When I was wee and my Saturdays constituted of spending the day glued to Grandstand, I used to watch a load of rugby league and really enjoyed watching the brilliant Wigan side of the late eighties and early nineties. I stopped watching it after Martin “Chariots” Offiah retired and Jonathan Davies came across from Union and made it rubbish. This did mean, though that I had a good knowledge of rugby league when I got here, because rugby league is massive down here.
That’s another thing that annoys me about Australia (allow me to digress for just a
second again), just about every single major sport that is played with a ball (with the exception of cricket) is called Footy. This is despite the fact that three out of the four largest sports, Australian Rules, Rugby League and Rugby Union are quite clearly played with the hands. You have no idea the frustration that comes with having to explain to an Australian the reasons why football (not soccer !!!) should be called football and the rest are violating all sorts of trades descriptions rules. Aaaaarrrrgghhhhh !!! It even bugs Lee having to explain to people. And she’s a girl !!!!!!
Anyway, rugby league is pretty much based in Sydney, much the same way that Aussie Rules is a Melbourne sport, but for all passion that surrounds the game here in NSW, it is a horrendously poorly supported sport at club level. One major reason for this is that a lot of the clubs have ditched their traditional grounds and taken up residence at the massive ANZ stadium, home to the Sydney Olympics a few years ago. Every weekend there are about 4 games played there, with around 16,000 fans rattling around inside a ground that holds 80,000.
Think Hearts at Murrayfield and you get the idea.
All this however, gets turned on its head every May when State of Origin comes around. State of Origin is a three game series between Queensland and New South Wales and is the highlight of the rugby league season. Australians regard playing for your state as a higher honour than playing for your country so whenever the SofO series comes around, the two states become hated enemies for around 7 weeks and it all kicks off. The thing is though, that you can come from Queensland and play for NSW and vice versa. You qualify for each side depending on where you played most of your junior rugby so come Origin time you have Sydney born players lining up in the press to declare their hatred for NSW and players from Brisbane pictured in their NSW shirt taking the mickey out of the “65,000 nutbag rednecks” (actual player quote) that will be supporting Queensland. It all adds to a cracking series of sport that is a rival to any ashes series in cricket or Scotland v England at anything.
Lee had fancied going to a game to see what
the atmosphere was like so we decided to take in Game 1 of this years State of Origin series to see what it is like. I was working on the day of the game and Lee was on a day off so I met her at Central Station and off we headed to the stadium. We were well into our saving frame of mind by this point so Lee had packed a little packed lunch for us, some sandwiches and crisps and a couple of bottles of fresh orange to drink at the game but Lee suggested we open one of them on the train. Strongest fresh orange I ever tasted, I’ll tell you that for nothing. It appeared that somehow, the fresh orange fairy had broken into the bottles and topped each one up with a generous helping of vodka while we weren’t looking. Cannot imagine how that happened for the life of me.
I think that this is what the powers that be had in mind for rugby league matches at ANZ stadium when they suggested moving 6 different clubs to the same stadium. There were 67,500 fans there for the night, and there was no segregation
at all. Hooliganism at games is unheard of here in Australia, even when everyone has had a skinfull before a game. You can still go and buy a beer and take it to your seat and scream abuse at the opposition players even though there’s a guy sitting next to you screaming for the other team. It does mean you don’t really get that Us v Them mentality that you get at football back home but it also means that there is always noise from all corners of the stadium no matter what team is winning or losing. We were, of course, supporting Queensland given that they play in maroon and are rather imaginatively called The Maroons and although you do your best to shout your support, the boos that erupted from the stadium when Queensland came out were pretty deafening so you kinda gave up. Nothing really changed after that and Queensland got pumped 18-10 by the end but it was a great occasion to witness and by the end we were almost ready to book our tickets for the next game in Brisbane three weeks later. We did decide against this once the excitement (and the vodka and
orange) had worn off though.
For the record, Queensland won the second game of the series 30-0 in Brisbane and as you read this, the third and deciding game will be played the week after we leave Oz. Not happy !!
C’mon the mighty Maroons !!
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