A ‘Fictitious National Crown’: The Rise and Fall of State of Origin Contests in Australian Rules Football, 1977–1999

For participants in many elite team sports, representing one’s country is considered the pinnacle of their career. However, in Australian Rules football, where no elite international competition exists, the highest level that a player could strive for was selection in interstate representative matches, colloquially known as State of Origin (SOO) games. Played intermittently between 1977 and 1999, SOO games shared similarities with professional American sport ‘All-Star’ contests where the best players were selected to compete in representative matches. In Australia, the early iterations of the concept were influenced by interstate rivalries, whereby matches were played for little more than state pride. In 1990, the Australian Football League (AFL) was established – the first professional nationwide club competition for the code. As the AFL grew in prominence, clubs and players became less willing to participate in what eventually became irrelevant exhibition games. This paper explores the concept’s initial development, its early success, and its ultimate decline. Under consideration are not only aspects concerning the growing ‘professionalism’ of the newly established national competition and its impact on traditional sporting values of competitive excellence, but the sometimes-ambivalent attitudes of fans, reflected by their attendance or lack thereof, and the AFL itself.