Article: Sydney Morning Herald, July 7th, 2007
The Signs Are All There: in Between Tries, Change is Afoot Up North
William McInnes
It has been Origin week in Queensland. It sounds all vaguely Darwinian and there's an evolutionary feel in the air. Brisbane is a city filled with fine cafes and little nooks of groovy splendour. As people like to say to me "It's changing up here, it's changing".
The week starts as I crawl from the evolutionary football swamps by playing in a charity soccer match organised by the Queensland Government and the Queensland Roar soccer team. An initiative in a campaign against racism. The Queensland team plays a South African team. I play in a curtain raiser. Nobody can find boots that will fit my feet, so I play in my pair of Colorado loafers that look like massive correctors. It doesn't really matter. The day is a beautiful, clear winter's special warmed by what is trying to be accomplished.
Later I stare down from the grandstand and hear an ex-international rugby league player shake his head and say almost dreamily: "Soccer at Lang Park. Been a lovely day - but come Wednesday she'll be different. Origin."
Driving through a town north of Brisbane - more evolution. Caboolture used to be a farming and dairy area, now it is a place of signs. Billboards, sprawling prefabricated shopping barns and housing estates. It has also been earmarked as a potential nuclear power station site. I pass the town square and see people dressed in robes and armour. There is a sign, "The Abbey Medieval Festival".
I look as a large round man in full chain-armour and helmet bellows like a loon at holidaying school children: "Enjoying your holidays, knaves?"
He waves a sword and the children scream. Behind him an old woman on an invalid scooter, festooned in maroon and white streamers, beeps the tiny horn at Sir Podgy to make way and let her pass. Leaning on a palm tree nearby, a man in an old Queensland rugby league jersey chats and laughs with his shadow.
"The home town of Keith Urban," says another sign. To think they want to put a nuclear power plant here.
"It's Origin Week," says yet another sign, just in case anybody's forgotten.
The next morning Origin jumpers and hats and flags are everywhere. I go with my mother to her tai chi class, run by a man called Kevin. An elderly woman in her late 70s wears a Queensland State of Origin jumper. As she unfurls her Flying Goose she looks at me. "I'm a proud Queenslander," she says. And she is. It is as if the state is encouraged, induced or just chooses to forget that it's an increasingly cosmopolitan place with a lifestyle envied by many.
During this one week Queensland is prompted and pushed into identifying itself through its relationship with NSW, or more pointedly, Sydney. And it's all one way. Sydney is the centre of evil. Those Mexicans in Sydney - they'll cook the ref! Maroonwash! scream the headlines. Huge photos of huge men with huge jaws and bored eyes stare from newspapers and televisions.
Queensland has won the series but somehow they are still underdogs.
On game night I sit in a local footy club; the climax of a week of evolution. Next to me a man frantically answers a phone call from somebody at home. He tries to talk through how to turn a TV on. "Press Av ... or TV ... Press it again ... anything?"
A groan from every crevice of the club is heard when Phil Gould's massive head appears on screen. "You busted arse."
"Press ... press DVD."
Willie Mason is booed and heckled. "You happy hand clapper! Let go of his head."
Young men drink alcoholic soft drink. The man next to me still whispers instructions. "AV, press AV ... it's there ... It must be there."
A lone NSW supporter cheers a little too loudly when Queensland's Brent Tate is injured. "You cat," he screams.
Come on, turn it up, I hear myself yell.
The young NSW supporter turns and yells: "I used to play this game and I'm naturalised." What that means is anyone's guess.
As soon as it's among us it's over. And Queensland have lost. Lost. An announcement comes over the club intercom: "Attention patrons, the result of tonight's Origin: Queensland 4, the Referee 18."
There's a silence for a few minutes and then a pleasant and bewildering calm descends.
Testosterone disappears into the ether.
A man two tables away wearing maroon war paint on his middle-aged cheeks and an ill-fitting
Queensland jersey, takes off his Toad Warrior head band and turns to his friend. "I'm just going to fetch a chamomile tea, like one?" Now that is evolution.
William McInnes
It has been Origin week in Queensland. It sounds all vaguely Darwinian and there's an evolutionary feel in the air. Brisbane is a city filled with fine cafes and little nooks of groovy splendour. As people like to say to me "It's changing up here, it's changing".
The week starts as I crawl from the evolutionary football swamps by playing in a charity soccer match organised by the Queensland Government and the Queensland Roar soccer team. An initiative in a campaign against racism. The Queensland team plays a South African team. I play in a curtain raiser. Nobody can find boots that will fit my feet, so I play in my pair of Colorado loafers that look like massive correctors. It doesn't really matter. The day is a beautiful, clear winter's special warmed by what is trying to be accomplished.
Later I stare down from the grandstand and hear an ex-international rugby league player shake his head and say almost dreamily: "Soccer at Lang Park. Been a lovely day - but come Wednesday she'll be different. Origin."
Driving through a town north of Brisbane - more evolution. Caboolture used to be a farming and dairy area, now it is a place of signs. Billboards, sprawling prefabricated shopping barns and housing estates. It has also been earmarked as a potential nuclear power station site. I pass the town square and see people dressed in robes and armour. There is a sign, "The Abbey Medieval Festival".
I look as a large round man in full chain-armour and helmet bellows like a loon at holidaying school children: "Enjoying your holidays, knaves?"
He waves a sword and the children scream. Behind him an old woman on an invalid scooter, festooned in maroon and white streamers, beeps the tiny horn at Sir Podgy to make way and let her pass. Leaning on a palm tree nearby, a man in an old Queensland rugby league jersey chats and laughs with his shadow.
"The home town of Keith Urban," says another sign. To think they want to put a nuclear power plant here.
"It's Origin Week," says yet another sign, just in case anybody's forgotten.
The next morning Origin jumpers and hats and flags are everywhere. I go with my mother to her tai chi class, run by a man called Kevin. An elderly woman in her late 70s wears a Queensland State of Origin jumper. As she unfurls her Flying Goose she looks at me. "I'm a proud Queenslander," she says. And she is. It is as if the state is encouraged, induced or just chooses to forget that it's an increasingly cosmopolitan place with a lifestyle envied by many.
During this one week Queensland is prompted and pushed into identifying itself through its relationship with NSW, or more pointedly, Sydney. And it's all one way. Sydney is the centre of evil. Those Mexicans in Sydney - they'll cook the ref! Maroonwash! scream the headlines. Huge photos of huge men with huge jaws and bored eyes stare from newspapers and televisions.
Queensland has won the series but somehow they are still underdogs.
On game night I sit in a local footy club; the climax of a week of evolution. Next to me a man frantically answers a phone call from somebody at home. He tries to talk through how to turn a TV on. "Press Av ... or TV ... Press it again ... anything?"
A groan from every crevice of the club is heard when Phil Gould's massive head appears on screen. "You busted arse."
"Press ... press DVD."
Willie Mason is booed and heckled. "You happy hand clapper! Let go of his head."
Young men drink alcoholic soft drink. The man next to me still whispers instructions. "AV, press AV ... it's there ... It must be there."
A lone NSW supporter cheers a little too loudly when Queensland's Brent Tate is injured. "You cat," he screams.
Come on, turn it up, I hear myself yell.
The young NSW supporter turns and yells: "I used to play this game and I'm naturalised." What that means is anyone's guess.
As soon as it's among us it's over. And Queensland have lost. Lost. An announcement comes over the club intercom: "Attention patrons, the result of tonight's Origin: Queensland 4, the Referee 18."
There's a silence for a few minutes and then a pleasant and bewildering calm descends.
Testosterone disappears into the ether.
A man two tables away wearing maroon war paint on his middle-aged cheeks and an ill-fitting
Queensland jersey, takes off his Toad Warrior head band and turns to his friend. "I'm just going to fetch a chamomile tea, like one?" Now that is evolution.
posted by WilliamWatch at 6:48 PM
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