Yes, he averred, it existed, and the standard was surprisingly high. Hughenden would take on the likes of Richmond, Julia Creek and Cloncurry and there were similar rivalries in local competitions around the North, most of which fed into the Foley Shield competition, played, if I recall correctly, in two zones on a home and away basis through the season with the final played in Townsville.
That competition ran from 1948 right through to 1995, a little later than you might have expected given the gradual withering that was going on below that top level. By the time I arrived in Bowen in 1984 the town had two teams playing in the Whitsunday competition along with Collinsville and Proserpine, and there was still a semi-viable local competition in the Burdekin. Bowen Pirates folded shortly thereafter, the Whitsunday and Burdekin Leagues merged for a while and, eventually, local Rugby League went into a hiatus from which it is only recently starting to emerge.
Most of that can be ascribed to the same factors that killed off regional identity through the eighties and nineties as media coverage of sport, along with virtually everything else that fell under the broad concept of news became increasingly focussed on the state’s south-east corner.
You might, looking at Rugby League and the question of regionalism, be inclined to cite the existence of the North Queensland Cowboys as evidence of a revival, and, to an extent, you might be right. Certainly, the presence of a competitive side in a national competition delivers a degree of regional identity, but it’s an identity that’s part of a wider competition rather than an expression of regional separateness.
There’s still, of course, a degree of parochial separateness in the Cowboys’ story. There’s more travel involved, players called to face the judiciary have to fly to Sydney, and when the Cowboys eventually made the Grand Final “Fatty” Vautin’s remarks about the other mob playing the Wests Tigers was the sort of thing that was going to make the Northern blood boil.
A Northern-based team, drawn almost exclusively from home-grown talent, would, I’d suggest, be more solid evidence of regional separateness, but in an environment where the other teams in the competition expect to be able to look all over the shop in their search for talent and State of Origin selection becomes increasingly pernickety that’s never going to happen.
And while it doesn’t relate to a separate North per se, it’s hard to avoid referring to the State of Origin as evidence of the weakening of separateness as the marketers and media magnates get their claws into what was once an opportunity for parochial sentiment and, more particularly, resentment, to run rampant.
Don’t believe me? Step, for a moment, away from partisan posturing, and examine the regular discounting of the so-called Maroon jersey factor, and the next controversy over which side some up and coming youngster should be playing for.
One would have thought Origin was a fairly clear cut concept, but if Origin actually equates to beginning, it seems we’ve got some issues with where your beginning actually begins. In that context I can’t help thinking back to my last year at Aitkenvale Primary before I was transferred to Bowen, and the arrival of a rather happy Acting Principal on my clasroom doorstep, Admission Form in hand.
We had, it seemed, managed to land a kid whose father was in the Air Force. Dad had been transferred to the RAAF base at Garbutt, and the kid had played for New South Wales Country