State of Origin fans expose the real cost of AFL’s bad choices | David Penberthy

There’s a clear reason why 83,000 fans in Sydney on Wednesday is a more potent spectacle than 100,000 in the MCG in September, writes David Penberthy. Have your say.

My teenage son and I have just returned from a flying visit from Adelaide to Sydney this week to attend game three of State of Origin.

Despite hailing from the AFL-loving state of South Australia, I developed a fondness for rugby league during my 12 years living and working in Sydney. That fondness was fuelled by living in Leichhardt and seeing several Balmain games at the local oval, a rundown beauty of a thing reminiscent of SANFL and VFL grounds of the 1970s.

My 19-year-old is crazy about league despite spending almost all his life in Adelaide. He watches more league games now than he does AFL and, unlike me, has a deep knowledge of the sport.

Perhaps he has a genetic predisposition to it on account of his birth at RPA Camperdown. Whatever the case, and despite the result on Wednesday, we had the time of our lives.

Experiencing State of Origin live is something every Australian sports fan should have on their bucket list. Even if you don’t love league there is something about the contest which is genuinely unlike anything else.

Queensland fans celebrate at Accor Stadium, Sydney, on Wednesday. Picture: Jonathan Ng

And at a time when the AFL is dithering about with hugely unpopular ideas like a mid-season tournament, and persisting with really stupid ones like round zero, there’s a bit that the so-called national game could learn from the league states about how they manage their code.

Having been lucky enough to attend some AFL Grand Finals on account of my former job editing newspapers, you might be surprised to hear that a crowd of 83,000 at Olympic Park can generate more atmosphere than 100,000 fans at the MCG.

The reason? At State of Origin everybody cares.

Origin isn’t overrun by schmoozers and hangers-on and suits who are there not because they’re barracking for either side but because they’re high up in the marketing department with one of the major sponsors.

Origin doesn’t sell half its tickets to people who don’t barrack for NSW or Queensland, unlike the AFL which sets aside thousands of tickets for supporters of the 16 other clubs which aren’t taking part on Grand Final day.

At Origin, everyone is all in. Aside from a small roomful of corporate types eating canapes in the flash suite hosted by ARL chief Peter V’landys, the entire crowd at Origin is 100 per cent focused and 100 per cent feral. And I mean feral as a compliment.

Feral in their support for the Blues, feral in their support for the Maroons, so much so that the train trip in from Central was every bit as entertaining as the game itself.

That journey was a powerful demonstration that Sydney is not a town with a convict past but a convict present.

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As the product of a genteel city in Adelaide which prides itself on a dull heritage of lawfulness, I have always been massively taken by Sydney’s raffish charms, evidenced by the fact that there were more people drinking longnecks on the train from Central to Homebush than there were stickers inside the train carriages advising commuters that the consumption of alcohol on board was strictly forbidden. None of the guards did a thing.

The banter was top-shelf, too, fuelled by the vocal presence of tiny pockets of Queensland supporters intelligent enough to remember their state’s official Origin cry, which is the name of their state with the suffix “er” attached to it.

One bloke in front of us in a Maroons jersey, drinking simultaneously from two hip flasks of Fireball Cinnamon Whisky, put his thumb on his forehead when he had downed them both and then stood up and gave double middle fingers to all the Blues fans on the train. “QUEENSLANDER!!!” he cried, as people threw stuff at him.

The weird thing about it was that the atmosphere could not have been any friendlier. It didn’t feel dangerous. It just felt like excellent, stupid fun.

The way rugby league is run feels like it looks at the people on board that train and regards them not as a menace, not as an embarrassment, but a focus group. These are the people the game is there to serve.

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As the AFL approaches the business end of 2025, it should ask itself a similar question. Who are we here for? Why do we exist? To use a wanky marketing term, who are our key stakeholders? What do the people most loyal to the game want from the game?

It seems pretty clear they don’t want opening round, played in the two states which remain to a large degree professionally disinterested in Aussie rules.

They don’t want the stupidity of two week break before finals to make up for a game lost due to weather, which will be a tedious dead rubber between Gold Coast and Essendon.

They don’t want to spend the whole year being puzzled by a premiership ladder that’s been out of kilter since day one on account of that result.

They don’t want the confected razzamatazz of a UEFA-style mid-year tournament.

And they don’t want endless bloody rule changes, nor namby-pamby nonsense about whether the umps are getting accidentally touched too much by players.

They do want great events like Gather Round, the one genuine credit to the AFL in that it is hosted in a state where everyone is mad about the game, easily accessed by those interstate who love it too.

But Gather Round aside, the AFL has had a bad year for drifting too far from the wants and aspirations of the people who make the game what it is.

Unlike league under the leadership of V’landys, whom I suspect has a photo of those loveable yobbos on the train from Central Station framed on his desk, leaving him in no doubt as to his employers truly are.