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In less than two weeks the traditional start summer kicks off with that familiar first session at the Gabba.
The intro theme for Channel Nine’s cricket coverage sticks in one’s head, the evening meal becomes regularly later in the day than previously in the year, and typically always outdoors as well.
We’ve just come through another Spring Racing carnival, the A-League has real traction in our sporting fix and it won’t be long before we start to become expert again on the journey by boat from Sydney to Hobart.
Our summer is based on sport, and our summer of sport is based on routine, ritual and repetition. The Boxing Day Test is always on Boxing Day, the Big Bash is crammed in and around the new years period and the Australian summer of golf sits just wonderfully before Christmas.
Yet, strangely, one of the biggest crowds for the summer of sport will be an audience of almost 40,000 on a balmy evening in Perth. Even by an Ashes standards that’s essentially as good a crowd you’ll see for summer.
And what makes this achievement more remarkable was that the event was not one itched into the fabric such as the aforementioned sporting pillars of our holiday season, but for a hybrid game played by the best of the best from the AFL, a winter sport.
Despite falling squarely at the end of their holidays, more so the very infancy of the pre-season, two dozen of the premier footballers in the land voluntarily put their hand up to revive a much maligned concept to represent their country in a contest fabricated to allow such a thing: representation.
To see Luke Hodge, Joel Selwood, Jobe Watson, Nick Riewoldt, just to name a few, grasp the opportunity with enthusiasm and zeal to take a week out of their usual professional commitments to link up and take on the Irish reinforces that underlying representative desire that the greater player body possesses.
Being a domestic and indigenous game, it’s a truly unique circumstance that this code of football – in this highly commercial successful period – offers no further product other than its existing club competition. Yet, such is the want, we as Aussies persist with attracting our Irish friends to meet halfway logistically in a game that combines elements of two greatly opposing formats.
Yes, the games do have similarities but let us call a spade a spade, our ball is oval and their ball is round. We tackle, bump and shepherd, they do not.
Their players are accountants, foremen and bartenders. Ours are professional footballers, and well paid at that.
So what does this all mean and what is the learning.
Saturday night’s game showed us, the key stakeholders in this domestic and indigenous game we are ever so fond of, that we do hold a real yearning and enthusiasm to see the elite of the sport play with their fellow elite. It shows us that a proper channel for representative football can exist, and quite successfully also.
But is it the international rules concept? One fears that it feels like the proverbial well – we keep going back to it. Its not going to satisfy us permanently, there are good reasons the series finds itself at the mercy of requiring ‘reviving’ periodically.
However a bumper crowd in late November when we’ve all by now forgotten just how good Hawthorn was against Sydney two months ago is beyond encouraging. There is a whole summer of cricket before the footy fan really seriously considers their team’s 2015 prospects, yet anyone who caught a glimpse of Australia’s win and saw the league’s crème de la crème linking together could not help but be engaged and get emotionally involved.
In this modern age the reference point of truth, with reluctance, is found on social media. In this instance social media got it spot on.
The overwhelming reaction to the success of the weekend’s fixture wasn’t so much a revival of the contrived contest between two nations competing against each other in a game neither nation plays, but that the interest and public appeal of seeing the best of the best indicated that State of Origin has a pulse and it must be given every chance to come back to life.
Whether the weekend indeed spawns a new dawn of successful international rules series being played year after year or not, no-one in ten years’ time when asked could tell you the guernsey the Australians wore back in 2014 when they defeated the Irish in Perth.
They may recall it had probably green and gold, perhaps some navy blue, but that’s your lot.
Yet you ask any passionate football fan from any of the southern states what their heroes wore back when State of Origin was in its heyday and you can bet your bottom dollar they all have the image imprinted into their minds eye.
One could argue there is no more iconic visual than a navy blue jumper with a large white ‘V’ on the front. Albeit if you gather from the western seaboard you may offer that it’s a gold jumper with a black swan.
South Australians would argue it’s the iconic red, blue and gold, a combination that evokes such passion from such a proud football state.
Conceding that Australian rules football transcends further parts of the country than the three states just mentioned, those three are the lifeblood for the competition, most importantly from a talent and revenue angle.
If one can just focus on Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia and consider what State of Origin would look like in the modern era.
The ability to have Gary Ablett receive a handpass from Joel Selwood who hits a leading Jarryd Roughead lace out. To witness Bryce Gibbs kick long and CHad Wingard take a screamer over Matt Pavlich, his captain. Or even Nic Naitanui tapping the ball down to Nat Fyfe who immediately looks for Lance Franklin.
Whether late November or pre-season, an ‘off-season’ representative game has buy in and the league will see Saturday’s crowd and TV ratings as not just a success but a commercial fascination, an opportunity to grow. That growth comes with State of Origin.
South Australia hosting Victoria at the new Adelaide Oval would be too good to be true, such to have not pursued the idea yet would be bordering on being classified as administrative dysfunction. Western Australia opening its brand-new, Adelaide Oval-rivaling stadium in 2018 with a State game is a no-brainer.
If you could sell out Pattersons Stadium for an international rules game in November, just how many spare seats would you get if Victoria returned in a legitimate State game (discounting the exhibition Hall of Fame match in 2008 as just that, an exhibition) at the grand old girl, the MCG? Not many you’d suggest, not many at all.
One-off games each year is the answer: Victoria, South Australia and Western Australia playing each other twice, home and away, over a six-year cycle.
While playing Victoria is the obvious drawcard, games between South Australian and Western Australia would be of such a high quality I’d challenge the passionate fans of those states to turn up their noses and refuse to attend because the Big V won’t be in opposition.
To go to the Adelaide Oval and see your Croweaters take on the Sandgropers with both teams littered with All-Australians, premiership players and best and fairests, where’s the deterrence in that?
The league is keen to further grow the game and to this point there is success in the northern states with new clubs, franchise players emerging from rugby league heartland and a truly national competition in place, the envy of other codes.
But much like the NRL State of Origin markets their code to non-rugby league states like nothing else, would not a Western Australia versus Victoria State game in primetime promote the code to those northern states more so than seeing the Gold Coast playing finals next year?
City Hall proclaims it needs to greater its focus on listening to its fan-base in order to rebound from a mixed year in 2014. This message from the fans is loud and clear. So exciting and wonderful was the Test match on Saturday the fans want it to be the last international rules game staged.
They want it immediately replaced by something different, something familiar, something better.
While they enjoyed the game immensely, they saw beyond its worth and yearned for the return of an old friend.
Bring back the Big V. Bring back the Croweaters. Bring back the Sandgropers.
Bring back State of Origin.
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