Origin? Over it.

Hands up Aussies if you're over State of Origin?

All that's on on tv, or in the papers, or anywhere is "Blues vs Maroons". Like our lives depend on it. Who's injured? Who's in the line up? What will the final score be?

Do I care?

No.

Big RESOUNDING NO.

What I hate is how he media, and the players try to insight this huge rivalry between the states. Like it's war. To the point of insighting violence. Only this week on the radio I heard an interview with one of the NSW players, encourageing the crowd for the homeside to "give the outsiders hell". Very healthy.

And I hate when you see eight year-old kids at the footy with their parents hurling abuse at refs, players, and other spectators, adults they have never met, because they see their parents doing it. Mass-hate. How far is our society really from George Orwell's distopian novel Nineteen Eighty-four? Can we liken football matches and hysteria like this to the group-hate sessions in the novel? What about the way war is perpetuated in Orwell's imagined society to keep the proles poor, scared, figthing and therefore under control?

I'll leave you with some quotes from Orwell. (If you haven't read "Nineteen Eighty-four" and "Animal Farm" - DO IT NOW!)

"football, beer, and above all, gambling, filled up the horizon of their minds. To keep them in control was not difficult"

"All the war-propaganda, all the screaming and lies and hatred, comes invariably from people who are not fighting"

"People sleep peaceably in their beds at night only because rough men stand ready to do violence on their behalf."

"Serious sport has nothing to do with fair play. It is bound up with hatred, jealousy, boastfulness, disregard of all rules and sadistic pleasure in witnessing violence. In other words, it is war minus the shooting. "