State of Origin

We had our first taste of aussie sport last night watching the annual State of Origin.

The State of Origin is an annual set of 3 Rugby League matches between 'the maroons', representing Queensland, and 'the blues', representing New South Wales. It's one of the main sporting events of the year and the aussies take it very seriously, especially here in Queensland where they're passionate about Rugby League.

It's called State of Origin because players are selected to play for the state in which they played their first professional rugby match. So in some cases club players actually get to play against each other in the State of Origin match, much like Premiership club players get to play against each other when they're representing their country. The first match was played in Brisbane on the evening we arrived here (Queensland won), with the second match last night played at the Telstra stadium in Sydney. We watched it on telly at home but we could have gone down to South Bank Parklands where it was being shown on a big screen. Before last night's game, the stats showed that competition was surprisingly close over the years, with New South Wales winning 38 matches and Queensland winning 39. More extraordinary still, the points difference was 1260 to 1261.

Anyway, in the end Queensland won 10-6 last night making the third game, to be played in Melbourne, academic. Being good Queenslanders we were cheering on the maroons of course, although they don't know how to say maroon here, they pronounce it morone for some weird reason.