Confession time

Some people like cross-dressing, some people like sniffing female cyclists' bike seats. Some people even like Gretel Killeen, or what's left of her. My personal penchants are, if anything, even more embarrassing to have to admit to, I'm afraid. But here goes..

I like City-Country.

Not in that way, obviously. It's pretty hard to develop a fetish over a selection trial for representative football. Let's face it, for many of the players, much of the fans and most of the clubs, it's hard to stimulate any kind of interest whatsoever in the annual bush-vs-smoke stoush, let alone interest of the downstairs variety. But, to be honest, City-Country is probably my favourite game of the year.

And no, north-of-the-border types, it's not just because for one game out of the year, there's no fucking Queenslanders playing. In fact - stick with me here - for myself and those of my ilk, City-Country is actually our only chance to conduct ourselves like Queenslanders all year.

Whafuck? Let me explain.

Queensland has, is and remains a very balanced state, with equally massive chips on both shoulders. Some of these are self-inflicted, like voting for Joh for a hundred and thirty years or not making it compulsory for kids to be educated beyond primary school level until the '60s. But others can be chalked up to the Mexicans. The sense of superiority - cultural, social, educational, economic - that the Southerners hold over those who bend bananas is felt keenly and bitterly north of the Tweed. You would be unlikely to see NSW or Victoria attempt to rebrand themselves as 'The Smart State' in a rather sad attempt to reverse the yee-haa cronyism of the past - though UQ are obviously fairly happy with the three massive research institutes Premier Pete's funded them to knock up on campus. Off the same floor plan no less. Before Queensland's recent economic renaissance, the locals didn't have much to hold over their southern tormentors, other than winning the Origin with some bullshit last-minute try every other year.

The interesting thing about Origin is that over in New Zealand, it's not only followed very closely, but viewed with maroon-tinted glasses. Kiwis seem to predominantly empathise with the Queensland side of the Origin divide, presumably seeing themselves as fellow put-upon underdogs (with NSW, by the same In Zid logic, standing in for the Australian nation at large.) Point being, it's a lot fun to be on the belligerent, underdog, we'll-get-you-silvertail-bastards side of the battle. Win and you're a superhero; lose and, well, those over-paid, over-rated, rich prettyboys were always going to win anyway, weren't they? Fuck 'em. Why else does everyone hate Manly?... Well, apart from all THOSE reasons, of course.

Every time Queensland wins Origin it's declared to be good for the game; every time NSW wins it's the death knell. It's entirely fair to say Origin exists for the benefit of Queensland. And by the same token, it's equally fair to declare that City-Country exists for the benefit of NSW's own put-upon, disadvantaged, undereducated, underdog populous: the people of rural and regional NSW.

Of which I am fucking proud to be a member, just quietly.

So I love City vs Country. I love seeing the jumpers - real LEAGUE jumpers, old school rep footy jumpers with solid, defiant Vs (and the Queensland analogy does fit, right down to the colour of the Country jerseys) - and love seeing big stupid bastards from Casino, Lithgow and Tingha barrelling out of the gate to smash those prettyboy latte-sipping interpretive-haired tools from Paddington, Parra, Penrith and The Fucken Shire. I love seeing how a couple of thousand happy faces from some random regional centre can give better crowd than your average jaded city crowd. For them, and for their playing representatives, it's just another trial game, a chance to perform in front of the NSWRL selectors before the Origin teams are picked. But for the country boys - like for the Queenslanders at Origin time - it means a lot more than that.












Former Casino garbo Matt King went so fast on debut for Country in 2005, his afro fell off


Today a Cantab of my acquaintance asked me what City-Country meant in the grand scheme of things, whether it really mattered. I thought for a bit about how to explain what this game meant to the two million New South Welshpeople who aren't from Sydney, and aren't fuckin' interested in BEING from Sydney. After a few moments, I hit upon the perfect analogy: one which a New Zealander, particularly a South Islander (and even more particularly a parochial Cantabrian) would understand in a microsecond. "Imagine," I suggested, "if they played an 'Auckland vs the Rest' New Zealand Origin game."

The Cantab, who we'll call Hamish (as that's his name), nodded and grinned. He understood. He understood perfectly.











Go the fuckin' country bumpkins.


The Doctor is OUT.