The All Stars match will never be the showpiece of rugby league. People will never be as passionate about it as they are about State of Origin. It will never draw as big an audience and winning it will never be regarded by the players as one of the game’s top honours.
But that doesn’t mean it is not a success, nor that this success won’t continue. Players, administrators and fans understand that the All Stars concept is too important to fail.
“State against State, mate against mate,” has been the catch-cry of Origin for decades, and was best defined in its very first match at Lang Park in 1980.
Artie Beetson (the man for whom the All Stars trophy is now named) famously punched his Parramatta teammate Mick Cronin in that first game at the Cauldron, setting the tone for Origin matches ever since.
And while for 362 days a year no sane Queenslander would claim to actually hate New South Welshmen – or vice versa – come Origin time, the word will be thrown around without a second thought.
Because it is understood that when a bloke dressed in maroon says he hates New South Wales, he doesn’t mean he’s going to turn up to ANZ Stadium with a machine gun, ready to strafe the blue wig brigade.
He means he’s going to boo Paul Gallen relentlessly, cheer Queensland excessively and – on the extremely rare chance New South Wales should win – declare his hatred for all those south of the Tweed (and possibly the referee).
But he’ll turn up to work the next day, have some banter with his New South Wales co-workers and get on with life.
Now put those shoes on and see how far they’d get you during the All Stars game.
Could you imagine a bloke in the stands at Skilled Park, booing Jonathon Thurston mercilessly and declaring at the end of the game how much he hates the Indigenous All Stars? There would be a riot and he certainly wouldn’t turn up to work the next day for light-hearted banter with any indigenous co-workers.
Of course this won’t be the case because the All Stars game isn’t that kind of game. It isn’t played in that spirit.
Perhaps the defining moment of the first All Stars game – the moment when the fans and players knew for sure the game was fair dinkum – was when indigenous player Cory Patterson laid out his Newcastle captain Kurt Gidley in a hit which saw Gidley miss the opening six weeks of the 2010 NRL season.
But Patterson’s hit wasn’t the kind you would see in a Newcastle pub on a Saturday night – rather, it was the kind you would see in a rugby league textbook under the heading “perfect tackle”. It was a fantastic advertisement for the All Stars game – a good clean hit with no malicious intent.
And that’s the beauty of the All Stars concept – it showcases the best of the game. The NRL’s best players, whether they hold New Zealand or Australian passports, line-up against the NRL’s best indigenous talent. The game is fast, entertaining and played in the truest spirit of good sportsmanship because, while neither side wants to lose, both sides understand the fact the game is played at all is a victory for reconciliation in a country which desperately needs it.
However, it is due to this spirit that the game will never ascend to the legendary heights of Origin. Because it is the spite of Origin, the passion that borders on hatred, which people come in their tens of thousands to see.
While I’m sure the All Stars game will sell-out, at the time of writing this story tickets were still available for purchase at the Ticketek website. This means the 27,400 seats at Skilled Park have not all been sold, though it is months since ticket sales opened.
Compare that to Origin last year, in which all three games – two at the 52,00 seat Suncorp Stadium and one at the 82,000 seat ANZ – sold out prior to kick-off, in some cases weeks before.
Granted there are some 30 years of history and build-up to Origin matches, but they are also played mid-season, not at the end of summer when your average punter hasn’t seen 80 minutes of football since the start of last October.
Furthermore, there are arguably more NRL stars in the All Stars match than in Origin. The likes of Benji Marshall and Manu Vatuvei are ineligible doe Origin, but any player in the NRL could play the All Stars game, every team is represented by at least one player and the fans themselves are the selectors.
Yet despite the timing of the game and the players involved, Skilled will probably sell-out just before kick-off and the TV audience will be February-impressive but certainly not Origin III-impressive.
The All Stars game is a fantastic concept, one that is helping to drive the game of rugby league forward both in terms of the way the game is played and more importantly, the impact it has on the community. Best of all, it is one of the best examples of practical reconciliation between indigenous and non-indigenous Australians.
It is for this reason – the spirit of reconciliation in which the game is played – that the All Stars concept will never scale the dizzying heights of State of Origin.
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