State of Origin’s inventor Leon Larkin has backed passionate game’s revival

State of Origin’s inventor has backed its return in an AFL pre-season window, arguing elite players are ready to again embrace the opportunity to play at the highest level.
Leon Larkin, the visionary behind the first Origin game between Western Australia and Victoria played at Subiaco Oval in 1977, believes it could work on a biennial basis and recapture the hype of the 70s and 80s.
“Yes, it will work,” Larkin told The West Australian. “But for different reasons than the original one.
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By continuing you agree to our Terms and Privacy Policy.“Australian football players are now full-time professionals and when you’re a professional, you always want to test yourself at the highest level.
“The best athletes in the world have the Olympics, Australian footballers have got nothing.
“They got this sort of mongrel game with Ireland occasionally but they haven’t got anything else.
“So the way that they can test themselves against the best is to play in something where they are tested at the very highest level.
“You make the All-Australian team and it’s fantastic, but it’s just a record thing.

“There’s no game, is there? There is no nowhere to go with that, whereas, if you can at least go up one level from what you’re playing, I think that’s important.”
The WA Government has pitched a WA-Victoria Origin game to the AFL, to be played at Optus Stadium in February, with deputy premier Rita Saffioti revealing the league was “very keen”.
Larkin has spent a lifetime running hotels all over the world, from Perth to St Petersburg, to Prague, Helsinki and Beijing, and is now based in Dubai as the president and founder of the International Association of Hotel General Managers.
He conceived the idea for the first Origin game in 1976 when he was marketing manager of Subiaco Football Club back in the glory days of the WAFL and it was rolled out 12 months later.
The first match, played between WA and Victoria on October 8, 1977, led to a series of memorable clashes between the two States and South Australia.
It peaked on a Tuesday afternoon in 1986 when WA beat Victoria in front of about 40,000 at Subiaco Oval, less than a year before the West Coast Eagles entered the then VFL.
“Those Tuesday games were some of the best football ever played,” Larkin said.
Larkin understood why Origin lost its lustre when the national competition was formed 34 years ago, but believes AFL players have a “sense of belonging” again.
“You look at the way that West Australian players, or South Australian players eventually want to go back home and finish their careers with a local club,” he said.
“That sense of belonging now means they want to honour those people who bought them into the game, their original coaches and so on, their original club when they were a junior.
“It’s a bit emotional, but it works.”
Asked if the players would need a financial enticement, Larkin said: “You probably would, but I think they would do it without it.”
Larkin’s original pitch was based on WA’s football being plundered by Victorian clubs, and icons of the State such as Graham “Polly” Farmer wearing the Big V jumper.
He paid credit to Victorian Football League’s president and executive director at the time, Allen Aylett and Alan Schwab, for making it happen.
“Funnily enough, it all came to a head, not in West Australia, but in South Australia,” he said.
“(South Australian) great Malcolm Blight was made captain of the Victorian team to play South Australia, that’s how ridiculous it got.

“But in ’77 we’d had enough of being beaten by Victoria and something had to give. And Allen Aylett came along.
“We’d already met with the VFL Players’ Association through (president) Don Scott. The WAFL wanted it, but the VFL didn’t and I gave up.
“And then I went to the Centenary Test in Melbourne in 1977 and ran into Alan Schwab in a pub. We were having a few beers and Schwabby said to me, ‘You know that idea you had for this state game? Look, present it again, because Allen Aylett would be the guy that would make it happen because he wants change’.
“And we did it. That was in March, and by October, the match was played.
“Allen knew two things. One was that there had to be change. And two was some of the Victorian clubs were going broke and the only way they were going to survive was to put more money in. And the only way they were going to get more money was to get money from other states.”
Two years later, Larkin was an adviser to rugby league as it set up its own State-of-Origin series, between NSW and Queensland, with a recent game held in Perth.
“I see the rugby league Origin (Game II) was recently played in Perth. Well, the WA Government is right to pursue this AFL Origin game,” Larkin said.

“They have to because they missed out on Gather Round, which is played in South Australia.
“We need more for WA and this can absolutely work.”