The State of Origami

For my dear Victorian readers, I should explain that tonight is the first of three State of Origin Rugby League matches.

I prefer to refer to it as State of Origami, which isn't meant to refer to the elegant simplicity of origami, but rather the sheer boredom you would suffer if you had to watch it for eighty minutes.

HG Nelson was interviewed on Radio National this morning and thanked the radio announcer for giving tonight's game a bit of publicity.

"There just hasn't been any media attention around this game," he said. "I am pouring over the newspapers today and not a damn thing about the game tonight."

The beautiful irony would not have been lost on those boring pinko lefty Radio National listeners.

Which brings me to the small fall-out from the article I wrote this week about a certain opinion piece by Michael Duffy that appeared in the Sydney Morning Herald on Saturday.

Published in Crikey on Monday, I had a good old fashioned rant that defended the role that the arts (and more particularly artists) play in our little corner of the world.

Central to my argument was that; "Art is going on all around you Michael, with or without the support of you and your colleagues in the media. Australians attend more theatre and live performance than they do sport. But one look at our media organisations and you'd never know it."

A comment to the article by 'Sandy' was a very interesting response to the article that I think a lot of people would have;

"I'd like to see the end of both of these wasteful elite slush buckets, but at least the sports people deliver some results and help large numbers of people feel good," he said.

"And really, Nick, if you were running the news, would you replace the sports coverage with analysis and previews of the high art scene? Not if you wanted anyone to keep watching," he said.

This is something that I have been thinking a lot about recently. Over the weekend I flew up to Brisbane to check out the Super 14 match between the Queensland Reds and the NSW Waratahs. And you know what, it was really quite boring.

And that wasn't just me. That was the response from the 20-odd thousand people in the stadium. At times it was so quiet, I wasn't sure whether I was in a museum or at a big and bright spectacle that we call 'sport'.

Indeed, the Queensland Rugby organisers practically pre-empted a boring match and hired drummers and musicians whose job it was to get the spectators cheering. And boy did they work hard.

And this isn't the first time that I have experienced a boring game of Rugby. I have experienced it at AFL matches, Rugby League matches and soccer matches. Sometimes you can get a really exciting game. In fact, odds on, you probably experience a really exciting footy match at about the same frequency as you experience a really exciting theatre production.

I am starting to think that the people in our little corner of the world are MADE to think that sport is this big, bright and beautiful thing all the time. The roaring graphics we see on television all the time, the hysterical commentators make you think that something really, really exciting is happening.

But it isn't really. It is sometimes but you need to fuel the interest with booze, cheerleaders, drummers and load sounds.

Feel good indeed. And yes, I would replace the sports coverage with analysis and previews of the arts. And I'd get Ray Warren, Eddie Maguire and Sam Newman to host the bloody thing too.

UPDATE: What a shock! Maybe people are catching on. This in Crikey today;

State of Origin suffering a popularity crisis in Sydney

For the first time in a long time -- perhaps a quarter of a century -- much of the build up to this year’s State of Origin series has focussed on the inability to get a capacity or near capacity crowd at tonight’s opening match at ANZ Stadium.

The ARL will need a good walk up crowd on the night to get anywhere near last year’s 75,000, which was still short of capacity. Ticket sales are reported to be in the region of 60,000, but anything less that 70,000 will raise further questions about the true state of the game of rugby league in Sydney ...