Why would they take it to a 25,000 stadium when they can get 80,000 in Sydney?

what about melbourne idiot

Because the original idea was to take it to England and you've no chance of filling Wembley.
RE: American Football, no its not massive over here but everybody has heard of the NFL. If I asked the man on the street what SoO was he wouldn't have a clue, even in a league town.
If you could somehow fill Elland Road I reckon you'd earn as much with the exchange rate as you would for 80,000 in Melbourne or Sydney

Interesting idea.

The English don't tend to do tribalism though, we can't be bothered getting off our backside for Lancashire and Yorkshire, let alone some state breeding 4 armed people in an old backwater of the Empire.

Leave them to play with each other in their big games in the convict colony I say.

nope i dont.

if you didnt care/were interested you wouldnt watch it.

and then people complain about poor quality debate.

is that right is it?

so why does the WCC get such good crowds.

clearly theres interest in the nrl then.

and perhaps this will attract a lot of fans that arent traditional RL fans.

you know, this could be a "promotional tool"

hang on, promotional tool and RL in england.

ive realized my error

its got nothing to do with getting english fans tribalistic for the game.

as i said before, we got 8000 with zero marketing for the game in LA.

as other sports can sell out wembley (life NFL) why not origin.

people would go to watch to see the best quality RL on the planet

perhaps the large amount of players registered to the BSL not to mention the ever increasing number of university and college teams dotted around the country.

then of course you have the ex pats. in the 80's there was a big push by the nfl to promote the game in the uk with a number of exhibition matches plus in the season we get better coverage of the nfl than we do of NRL.

i can get 4-5 games a week between sky and channel 5.

but what would be the point? We already have a RL game that sells out Wembley. If you want to use SOO to spread the game lets worry about making RL a national game in Australia first!

since the yanks are going pro why not play the SOO there? seeing as you can get people to attend in LA with no marketing perhaps with marketing you could sell out the big stadiums.

Or they could have their own state of origin or west vs east. Which they would probably turn into some kind of all star game! which i suppose SOO essentially is considering the players in the 2 teams.

If it was played in England you may actually get a bit of atmosphere.

State of Origin would not sell Wembley out. Not a chance.

Comparing NFL with SoO is ridiculous. People will watch NFL because it's the only chance they'll get to see a HUGELY well known competition, so it's a novelty. If you know what American Football is, you know what the NFL is. They're hand in hand. If you know what Rugby League is, it doesn't mean you know what State of Origin is. There's a massive awareness difference. That's not anti-Australian, that's just reality. SoO is nowhere near as important to RL as NFL is to American Football. SoO would not exactly be a massive novelty to sports fans in comparison to the NFL game. There's already the CC.

37 responses? Really?
=redtb - not Mintbal

Because it's' not one of your minor domestic competitions, but an international competition. Fool.

heres the point

english fans turn out in very large numbers to see an nrl team play because its a special event.

origin is a special event.

if youve watched one, youll know what im talking about

English fans turn out in medium-sized numbers (20-35k) to see a competition involving the English Champions and the Aussie Champions. They can connect with one of the teams. If it was just 2 Aussie teams they wouldn't really care. Origin is not that important to people outside Australia.

England vs Australia would got a better crowd than SoO in England. And I'm glad. Inter-state games are not the pinnacle of the game. Internationals are.

Once you've explained to 95% of the population of England that there are, in fact, two types of Rugby - the one with lineouts, pile-ons and lots of kicking, and the one where they run a lot and get up and roll the ball behind them - you then have to get them interested enough to buy a ticket.

Origin would maybe sell out at the Galpharm, KC, JJB (...sorry, DW) - maybe even Elland Road or City Stadium. But anywhere away from the heartlands, you don't have a chance.

Everyone in the UK has heard of American Football. I never cease to be amazed at the number who have never heard of Rugby League - even in Manchester. Rugby, to huge numbers, consists of the Six Nations and every so often, the Union World Cup. And that's it. Oh, in their sub-conscience they remember hearing 'Wigan' a lot on Grandstand many years ago, and they've heard of Ellery Hanley and Martin Offiah, but you'd be astounded just how many have never put two and two together and realised they didn't play the rugby they know.

Players who play in England are not allowed to play origin, might be a boring game with no players

The poms can't even get good crowds to watch their own rep sides. I can't see them getting a big crowd to watch ours. Although, if you played it in London at a decent ground it might at least attract most of the Aussies in London which would might be 20k or more. And it would probably be the best and most intense standard of football ever played in England.

ok . its an aussie thing . lets play nsw vs england

why did leeds go too the usa and play

Having been to a nothing Aussie Rules game at the Kennington Oval (20,000 crowd), I think a challenge game between say the Warriors and the Broncos would at least awake the introverted London/national media that there is more interest in our game outside of Oldham.

Half of Australia vs the other half of Australia? Give us a call when you're world champions, and we'll think about it



Seriously, Origin is great where it is. If you played it in England, it would suck.

Next idea please!

Fredie has stolen my thunder,I started a thread like this 3 years ago with about 300 posts and 80% of poms wouldn't support it.I bet if it happened they all will come out in there droves.