Does the concept of State of Origin rugby league exist anywhere else in the world?
It is a Australian rugby league 3 game series played between Queensland and New South Wales where eligibility is determined by where you played your first rugby league game after the age of 16.
I think the Pro Bowl could be made more interesting by having a Blues vs Greys game where players have there team chosen by whether their college was north or south of the Mason-Dixon Line. Have some suitable North vs South promotion to get some interest up with North/South stereotypes.
Be surprised if you get any examples that approach the State of Origin games for intensity and quality. The few games I’ve seen were like gladitorial combat for the modern era.
Can only think of home internationals like England v Wales at rugby union as sort of a similar idea, formally intranational play between two parts of the same country. Most of the players play in the same league etc. It’s not at the same level as SoO, but it’s a serious game. At least for the Welsh.
It’s not a great example tbh, because it’s basically an international whereas NSW v Queensland is not. I’ll have another think.
The closest thing I can think of really doesn’t exist any more: the Roses cricket match between Yorkshire and Lancashire, back in the days when you had to be born in the county to represent it. (Although those days weren’t as long ago as one might think: the first person born outside Yorkshire to play for the county was Sachin Tendulkar…who is still playing.)
That’s not really the same since the State of Origin matches have a hard-and-fast rule about who you can play for and Britain’s RFUs don’t. You can play for Wales if you were born in England, and vice versa.
That “hard and fast” rule isn’t as hard or fast as you think. It’s true that most players’ eligibility is straightforward (if your first juniors game was played in NSW, you wear blue - if it was in Queensland you wear that stupid purply colour), but there have been a number of cases where this hasn’t been enforced, and not only where someone’s “state of origin” has been Victoria or somewhere offshore.