Justin Langer: Origin football shows the difference between representing your flag or playing for a franchise

Last Saturday night, 58,141 people packed into Optus Stadium to watch Western Australia take on Victoria in the first AFL State of Origin match in more than a quarter of a century. Victoria won by 24 points, but the scoreboard only told part of the story. What they saw from the stands, and through millions of TV screens, was something far deeper than a pre-season exhibition match. It was tribal. It was fierce. It was real. You could feel it in the lead-up. You could hear it the voices. You could see it when the players and coaches were presented with their jackets and jumpers. Jesse Hogan, a proud West Australian boy from Scarborough, played like a man possessed. It was like he wanted to put on a show, not only for his family and friends but for all West Australians, who may have once written him off. Young Victorian Jacob Weitering ended up in hospital after a collision in the opening quarter. The game came to a standstill, but the moment was more proof that these guys weren’t playing for draft picks or contract negotiations, they were playing for their State. From the first bounce to the final siren, every contested ball showed that there were passion and superiority on show. Sure, there were no points on the line, but there was no doubting the pride that was at stake. Saturday night reminded me of rugby league’s State of Origin. There is nothing quite like it in the world. Back when I was a teenager at the Australian Institute of Sport, Cricket Academy, I was first introduced to State of Origin but my eastern States’ teammates. What’s all the hype about I thought. Until I watched my first game. You take players who are teammates at club level and pit them against each other wearing the sky blue of New South Wales, or the maroon of Queensland, and suddenly they’re willing to kill each other. Forget running through brick walls, this is like hand-to-hand warfare, with a rugby league ball bouncing around like a metal marble in a pinball machine. From what we see, the intensity goes up three or four notches. The tackles are harder. The effort relentless and the fans ravaged with rage and admiration for their State-born heroes, who on other weekends, are like sworn enemies wearing their club jumpers. State of Origin for league fans and players is not about money; it’s about where you come from, who you represent, who you are playing for. I have friends who get blood in their eyes when they talk about those Queenslanders, or that mob from NSW. It’s funny to listen to, but frankly I get it, I understand that feeling in my bones. As a young man, I spent a lot of time playing cricket in England. I loved it over there. I played English club cricket first, learning my trade on green seamers in conditions that were about as far removed from the WACA as you could imagine. Then as the years went on, I played county cricket for Middlesex, where I got to bat at Lord’s, the home of cricket, and later for Somerset, where I played alongside some wonderful cricketers in beautiful parts of the English countryside. Those years were formative. They toughened me up, taught me to adapt, and broadened my understanding of the game and of life. I loved it, my family loved it, and those years helped formed true friendships and unforgettable memories. But, in all those times there was always a pull to come home. Always. When I got the call to play for Scarborough CC, Western Australia, or to pull on the baggy green for Australia, there was an emotion that county cricket, as much as I enjoyed it, could never replicate. Walking out to bat for your country, with your family in the crowd and your mates watching from the couch, is something that lives in your heart. It’s pride. It’s identity. It’s the culmination of every backyard game, every net session, every sacrifice my parents made driving me to training, or a match. I remember running laps of the ground at Somerset during the 2006 season when one of the groundsmen shouted in a broad Somerset accent: “When are you going to stop running, young man?” My instant reply, with a laugh, was: “When we win back the Ashes next season.” Knowing I was going home to play my final Ashes series at home kept a fire burning inside me that was like an inferno in my soul. Much as I loved every game of cricket, every club, every experience, it was always the pull of being better for when I got home, that truly drove me. I think about this a lot when I look at the modern game of cricket. The franchise model has exploded around the world. The Indian Premier League, the Big Bash, the Pakistan Super League, the SA20, The Hundred. Players now travel the globe chasing lucrative contracts, and I don’t begrudge them that for a second. These are short careers and they have every right to maximise their earning potential. But I do wonder sometimes whether the constant movement dilutes something that used to be sacred. When you play for five or six different franchises in a calendar year, players must sometimes question where their allegiance lies? Who they’re playing for? What they you playing for? I’ve spoken to enough cricketers to know that the ones who’ve experienced ‘flag’ and ‘franchise’ will tell you the same thing — there is still nothing like representing your country or your State. Nothing. The money might be better elsewhere, but the feeling rarely comes close. When I first took over as coach of the Perth Scorchers and WA back in 2012, I said publicly and privately, that I wanted as many West Australians playing for WA as possible. That was a non-negotiable in my mind, unless there were players who were special in other areas. Some people thought I was being parochial. Others thought I was foolish. Maybe I was. But I believed there was genuine power in representing something deeper than yourself. When you fill a team with players who grew up together, who trained together at the WACA, who understood what it meant to represent this State, you created a bond that was hard to manufacture any other way. It gave us a competitive advantage. When WA won their first Sheffield Shield title under the guidance of Adam Voges and Shaun Marsh, all the players were home-grown talents. After 20 years of a bare Sheffield Shield cabinet, the victors were born and bred at home. The West Coast Eagles’ first premiership team in 1992 who beat Geelong at the MCG to become the first non-Victorian club to win an AFL flag, was a team full of West Australians. Peter Matera was extraordinary that day, kicking five goals from the wing in one of the great individual grand final performances. Peter Sumich kicked six. Dean Kemp, Glen Jakovich, Guy McKenna, champions, all of them. The thing that still amazes me was that every single player in that premiership team was from WA. Every one of them. The only person from the eastern States was Malthouse himself. When I first heard that at the 30-year anniversary, I was genuinely surprised. But the more I thought about it, the less surprising it became. Those players knew each other. They’d grown up playing against each other in the WAFL. They shared something that went beyond tactics and game plans, they shared an identity. When they ran out at the MCG in front of 93,000 people, most of whom were cheering against them, that shared identity of representing more than just their club became their superpower. The ‘them versus us’ mentality is a real force; one that can inspire you or haunt you. We shouldn’t shy away from this feeling but rather embrace it. We are tribal people. It’s in our DNA. Long before organised sport, human beings formed tribes for survival, for protection, for purpose, for belonging. Sport has simply become one of the most visible expressions of that instinct. When NSW and Queensland go to war in State of Origin, it’s tribal. When WA lined up against Victoria at Optus Stadium last Saturday, it was tribal. When I walked out to bat in an Australia v England Ashes series it was tribal. The pull of home, playing for where you’re from, for the people who raised you, for the community that shaped you, that is something no contract can buy. It’s the reason 58,000 West Australians turned up on a Saturday evening to watch their boys play footy. It’s the reason State of Origin reduces grown men to tears. And it’s the reason I always believed that a team full of proud locals can take on the world. I hope the AFL do it again soon.