1980 State of Origin game

The 1980 State of Origin game was the first game between the Queensland Maroons and the New South Wales Blues rugby league teams to be played under "state of origin" selection rules. It was played on 8 July 1980 under the newly configured rules by which a player would represent his "state of origin", i.e. the state in which he was born or in which he started playing registered first grade rugby league football. It was the third match of 1980s annual interstate series between the Blues and the Maroons, and was only allowed to go ahead because the first two matches and the title were already won by New South Wales.

The first two matches were played under the existing residential selection rules - i.e. Blues players could only be sourced from clubs south of the border and the Maroons only from north of it before the single experimental match took place. This was often a source of angst for Queensland as the old State of Residence rules had long seen some of Queensland's top players actually representing NSW as players could earn better money in the Sydney premiership thanks to clubs cashed up with Poker machine money. As poker machines were illegal in Queensland, most of the clubs could not hope to match the money on offer to their star players, with a steady stream of players leaving to play for Sydney clubs. The list of players who had headed south in the 1960s and 1970s had included Arthur Beetson, John Lang,, Rod Reddy, Rod Morris, Mitch Brennan and Kerry Boustead.

After a match involving intense all-in brawling, the Maroons won the first state of origin game 20-10.

The first match of the annual best-of-three interstate series was played at Lang Park in Brisbane and won by NSW 35-3. In the second game at Leichhardt Oval in Sydney (described by Qld Halfback Wally Lewis as being played on a Tuesday night in front of two men and their dog, with the dog going home at half-time. The official paid attendance was just 1,368 compared to the 25,000 crowd for Game 1 in Brisbane), the Maroons put up more of a fight against a NSW side that was missing a number of players through injury, but were defeated again, this time 17-7. The first State of Origin game very nearly didn't go ahead in 1980. The Queenslanders had put in a spirited and much improved performance in the second game at Leichhardt Oval, with officials confirming that had they actually won the game then the third game of the series would have been played under the State of Residency rules and Origin as it has become might have died then and there. Queenslanders Kerry Boustead, Rod Reddy, Rod Morris, John Lang and Graham Quinn had actually played for NSW in the first two games of the 1980 Interstate series, with all bar Quinn being selected to represent Queensland in the Origin game.

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