Martin Samuels: SOO is the biggest Rugby event in the world, English FA should follow suit and adopt the North XI vs South XI concept
The biggest rugby series in Australia, perhaps in the world right now does not even involve the British and Irish Lions. Like the Lions’ visit, however, it is an event that seems increasingly out of place in the commercial world of modern sport.
Each year, representative rugby league teams from Queensland and New South Wales contest the State of Origin series. The second of three games will be taking place in Brisbane today, with Queensland trailing from match one.
That really isn’t important. If anything ever fits Neville Chamberlain’s description of ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’ it is the Maroons versus the Blues (although many rugby league aficionados do maintain these games are the highest standard of competition in the world).
It is the principle enshrined, and not the actual matches, that is significant here.
The State of Origin fixture is precisely that. Players do not represent the state in which they play, but the state in which they first entered professional rugby league. Most times, this is the state in which they were born.
There are obviously anomalies and controversies, brothers who have appeared for different states, fathers and sons who have played for opposite sides. Recently, rules were tightened to put greater emphasis on place of birth and exclude foreign players who came to the country to play rugby league.
From 2012, State of Origin participants had to be eligible to play for Australia. The concept, though, is quite wonderful.
It burrows back to the source of competitive sport, before the protagonists were mere guns for hire. There has always been something admirable about those clubs where origin mattered, Yorkshire CCC, Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad, determinedly playing with one foot in the past. In modern times, such ideals are simply impractical and outdated. Yet the State of Origin games remind us what sport used to be like.
The competition has only been going in its present format for 33 years. State of Origin matches were always played, but until 1980 a player represented the state of his club side. Some say the first true State of Origin matches were played by Australian soldiers on the South Pacific island of Bougainville at the end of the Second World War.
Following Japan’s surrender there on August 21, 1945, some 30,000 Australian troops needed to come home. The complication was that the US Navy was prioritising the return of its own forces, meaning the Australians had to wait for the Pacific fleet to sail to America and back before they could be collected.
Desperate to keep the men amused, all manner of competitions were organised, including State of Origin games. Queenslanders in New South Wales regiments, however, objected to being on the wrong side, and vice versa, and a more literal selection process was advanced. The men played for where they were from, not where they were at. It is this idea that was picked up some 35 years later.
It is one of the great pities, the demise of esoteric representative sport. These days everything is about big leagues, big cups and big money.
It is what makes the British and Irish Lions special, the idea that a disparate group of athletes come together and play for a team that exists once every four years, for the hell of it. The State of Origin series is similar.
Of course, there are sponsors and TV rights to be negotiated and professional reputations — and therefore earnings — to be enhanced. Yet it somehow remains a connection to a more innocent age. The greatest game in Australian rugby league takes a player back to his roots, it does not tie him to the club that pays his salary.
Club football in England is now so powerful that there is barely room for international games, let alone representative fixtures. Yet other countries make space and maintain these almost whimsical traditions.
Baseball’s famous ‘Midsummer Classic’ is an All-Star encounter between the National and American leagues, with representative teams coached by the winner of the previous season’s pennant. Squads are selected by fan vote (25 per cent), player vote (50 per cent) and coach vote (25 per cent). It is regarded as a serious honour to play.
So America finds room for this unfashionable echo of school and college sport, when representative selection was the pinnacle. Being called up to play for the district, or the county, or the region, was a big deal. We have lost touch with these innocent pleasures and honours.
If international football is struggling for air, what chance the hyper-local identity?
Imagine an English football equivalent of a State of Origin game — a North versus South, in which players were called home, regardless of club loyalties — Andy Carroll from West Ham United to the North, Glen Johnson from Liverpool to the South.
Clearly, there would need to be boundaries for this hypothetical fixture, a line drawn across England, say, one mile over Nottingham, with the North above and the South below.
Stoke would be the first Premier League team going north, but all the other major Midlands regions would be south (this becomes significant in a moment, as you will see). Scotland, clearly, is north, as is Northern Ireland. Yet what of Wales? Let them be northern, too. One imagines the Welsh would feel more kinship with Engand’s industrial heartland than its white-collar capital. All players should be eligible to represent a home nation.
Now, let football’s State of Origin games begin.
Leaving aside the now compulsory Terry-Ferdinand tear-up — which could be quickly solved by the insertion of Ashley Williams, born in Wolverhampton — this looks a fairly well-balanced contest.
Using Australia’s State of Origin rules, Carrick could play for the South as his first professional club was West Ham and Sturridge the North through his debut at Manchester City, but place of birth seems a purer way to decide.
I reckon the South seem tighter at the back, the North better going forward, but, obviously, we’ll never know.
English football is far too sophisticated for regional representative games these days. The last was in the Football League, in the old days of Third Divisions South and North, and lasted four seasons 1954-55 to 1957-58. How quaint it must have felt.
Now when football plays it is for something far more meaningful than origin or pride. It’s for money.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ar...-North-versus-South-battle.html#ixzz2XHQ2DD3h
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The biggest rugby series in Australia, perhaps in the world right now does not even involve the British and Irish Lions. Like the Lions’ visit, however, it is an event that seems increasingly out of place in the commercial world of modern sport.
Each year, representative rugby league teams from Queensland and New South Wales contest the State of Origin series. The second of three games will be taking place in Brisbane today, with Queensland trailing from match one.
That really isn’t important. If anything ever fits Neville Chamberlain’s description of ‘a quarrel in a faraway country between people of whom we know nothing’ it is the Maroons versus the Blues (although many rugby league aficionados do maintain these games are the highest standard of competition in the world).
It is the principle enshrined, and not the actual matches, that is significant here.
The State of Origin fixture is precisely that. Players do not represent the state in which they play, but the state in which they first entered professional rugby league. Most times, this is the state in which they were born.
There are obviously anomalies and controversies, brothers who have appeared for different states, fathers and sons who have played for opposite sides. Recently, rules were tightened to put greater emphasis on place of birth and exclude foreign players who came to the country to play rugby league.
From 2012, State of Origin participants had to be eligible to play for Australia. The concept, though, is quite wonderful.
It burrows back to the source of competitive sport, before the protagonists were mere guns for hire. There has always been something admirable about those clubs where origin mattered, Yorkshire CCC, Athletic Bilbao and Real Sociedad, determinedly playing with one foot in the past. In modern times, such ideals are simply impractical and outdated. Yet the State of Origin games remind us what sport used to be like.
The competition has only been going in its present format for 33 years. State of Origin matches were always played, but until 1980 a player represented the state of his club side. Some say the first true State of Origin matches were played by Australian soldiers on the South Pacific island of Bougainville at the end of the Second World War.
Following Japan’s surrender there on August 21, 1945, some 30,000 Australian troops needed to come home. The complication was that the US Navy was prioritising the return of its own forces, meaning the Australians had to wait for the Pacific fleet to sail to America and back before they could be collected.
Desperate to keep the men amused, all manner of competitions were organised, including State of Origin games. Queenslanders in New South Wales regiments, however, objected to being on the wrong side, and vice versa, and a more literal selection process was advanced. The men played for where they were from, not where they were at. It is this idea that was picked up some 35 years later.
It is one of the great pities, the demise of esoteric representative sport. These days everything is about big leagues, big cups and big money.
It is what makes the British and Irish Lions special, the idea that a disparate group of athletes come together and play for a team that exists once every four years, for the hell of it. The State of Origin series is similar.
Of course, there are sponsors and TV rights to be negotiated and professional reputations — and therefore earnings — to be enhanced. Yet it somehow remains a connection to a more innocent age. The greatest game in Australian rugby league takes a player back to his roots, it does not tie him to the club that pays his salary.
Club football in England is now so powerful that there is barely room for international games, let alone representative fixtures. Yet other countries make space and maintain these almost whimsical traditions.
Baseball’s famous ‘Midsummer Classic’ is an All-Star encounter between the National and American leagues, with representative teams coached by the winner of the previous season’s pennant. Squads are selected by fan vote (25 per cent), player vote (50 per cent) and coach vote (25 per cent). It is regarded as a serious honour to play.
So America finds room for this unfashionable echo of school and college sport, when representative selection was the pinnacle. Being called up to play for the district, or the county, or the region, was a big deal. We have lost touch with these innocent pleasures and honours.
If international football is struggling for air, what chance the hyper-local identity?
Imagine an English football equivalent of a State of Origin game — a North versus South, in which players were called home, regardless of club loyalties — Andy Carroll from West Ham United to the North, Glen Johnson from Liverpool to the South.
Clearly, there would need to be boundaries for this hypothetical fixture, a line drawn across England, say, one mile over Nottingham, with the North above and the South below.
Stoke would be the first Premier League team going north, but all the other major Midlands regions would be south (this becomes significant in a moment, as you will see). Scotland, clearly, is north, as is Northern Ireland. Yet what of Wales? Let them be northern, too. One imagines the Welsh would feel more kinship with Engand’s industrial heartland than its white-collar capital. All players should be eligible to represent a home nation.
Now, let football’s State of Origin games begin.
Leaving aside the now compulsory Terry-Ferdinand tear-up — which could be quickly solved by the insertion of Ashley Williams, born in Wolverhampton — this looks a fairly well-balanced contest.
Using Australia’s State of Origin rules, Carrick could play for the South as his first professional club was West Ham and Sturridge the North through his debut at Manchester City, but place of birth seems a purer way to decide.
I reckon the South seem tighter at the back, the North better going forward, but, obviously, we’ll never know.
English football is far too sophisticated for regional representative games these days. The last was in the Football League, in the old days of Third Divisions South and North, and lasted four seasons 1954-55 to 1957-58. How quaint it must have felt.
Now when football plays it is for something far more meaningful than origin or pride. It’s for money.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sport/ar...-North-versus-South-battle.html#ixzz2XHQ2DD3h
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