Rivalries and passion – what NZ rugby can learn from Origin

Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow celebrates his opening try during State of Origin 1.
Photo: AAP / www.photosport.nz

Opinion – We’re rolling into the Super Rugby Pacific’s last regular season round, but while the match-ups are juicy, the focus this week for most fans is where it’s been for the past couple of decades: on State Of Origin.

There are a fair few jokes about just why New Zealanders with no connection to New South Wales or Queensland, other than the odd holiday to Sydney or the GC, get so invested in a rugby league series.

To really understand it, there’s a long conversation about what it means to live in a federation, the power of being drawn back to your roots and just how well league works when you want to hype it up to boiling point.

But really, it’s how sports rivalry lives at about its healthiest and most lucrative point when it’s done right. It gets asked a lot, but it is worth revisiting just what New Zealand can learn from State of Origin and how rugby can tap into the emotion it generates.

North v South? It certainly was a thing in the old days but had the extra weight of being an All Black trial as well, which guaranteed viewership. It probably wouldn’t serve that purpose anymore, at least not as directly, but it would probably be a pretty close replication of Origin if done properly.

That would, of course, necessitate the need for a major shift from the sterile way rugby has been marketed in New Zealand.

Not just by the people running the game either. It is commonplace for NSW and QLDers to say they hate one another when Origin rolls around, in fact Warriors coach Andrew Webster reiterated that he wasn’t kidding when he mentioned it this week at the team’s media session. It’s the sort of spirit that can only really be tapped into by separating the country by its own geography and the culture differences that exist between the North and South Islands.

It’s unlikely to happen, at least not while the season is structured the way it is now, anyway.

While a one-off modern era North v South match took place in an empty stadium in 2020 thanks to New Zealand’s amenities and borders still being shut, and was a very entertaining and well-received fixture, there’s just nowhere to put it in a highly congested season that sees the All Blacks get milked for all their worth.

That’s the issue, really. All Black fixtures will continue to take precedence over everything else, no matter how one-sided and frankly boring they are. If NZ Rugby is committed to never actually trying anything new in the elite level space, they can only watch on and wonder why Origin keeps people up till midnight on a Wednesday.

At least some of that tribalism could be applied to this weekend’s game of the round, the Hurricanes hosting the Crusaders in Wellington.

There is absolutely zero love lost between Wellington and Christchurch. However, the marketing of this match from either team this week has been pathetically non-existent.

In fact, the Hurricanes haven’t even tweeted in almost a month while the Crusaders have simply listed a team sheet.

There have been plenty of grumblings from the Super Rugby teams’ bosses over the negative coverage that the competition has had this year, and some of that discontent is fair enough.

But you must do something to get fans engaged other than just play good rugby. There’s an entire undercurrent of sentiment to be stoked with this match, an entire stadium to be filled.

You don’t need a massive advertising budget to tell your people that the team that is coming to town is there to be disliked, booed and jeered. Or that your own team is to be cheered, supported and invested in.

You just need people to do their jobs. The Hurricanes and Crusaders is a rivalry between two places that don’t like each other anyway – it’s not hard.