City vs Country Origin


City vs Country Origin was an annual Australian rugby league football match that took place in New South Wales between City and Country representative sides. The City side represented the Sydney metropolitan area. While technically it was Sydney vs. the rest of NSW, players from the Central Coast often represented City, but other players from the Central Coast represented Country. The Country side represented the rest of New South Wales.
The concept of an annual clash between a City and Country team originally started in 1911 with a Metropolitan side taking on the Country team. The first match officially took place on 10 June 1911 with City taking the victory 29 to 8. It would take another seventeen years before an annual clash between an official City and Country side was agreed upon during the 1928 season.
Both sides were originally made up of the best players playing in the Country Rugby League of New South Wales and the Sydney-based NSWRL Premiership. However, the increasing drain of players from rural areas to the NSWRL clubs led to the City side becoming increasingly dominant and the Country side uncompetitive. The 'origin rule' for player qualification being introduced in 1987 so players in NSWRL clubs originally from outside Sydney became eligible to represent Country.
The players who represented the City and Country sides came from the National Rugby League competition in Australia. The match was played before the State of Origin series and was often referred to as a selection trial for the New South Wales Blues team.
On 21 November 2016, the NRL announced that the City v Country annual match would be scrapped, with the 2017 match to be the final edition.

History

Country versus City had long played a part in New South Wales sporting history, with the first traces of the concept being linked back as far as 1886. The then Southern Rugby Football Union would hold an annual `test match' between a Combined Countrymen and Metropolis sides, with the match to be used by the organisation for picking players for NSW.
The concept took off and by the early 1900s `Country Week', as it was titled, became a major component of the Rugby calendar. This rivalry between City and Country continued to occur after Rugby League was formed in 1907. However, it was only in 1911 that rugby league held its first recorded City V Country clash. While there is some indication that a match may have been played in 1910, the code's infancy probably resulted in the game not being of a high enough standard to be recorded.
The representative match was played on a laissez-faire basis in League up until 1928 when the Country Rugby League and New South Wales Rugby League saw the value in making the tournament an annual match. This was understandable at the time for League, as many areas in Country NSW had not even heard of League until late 1927.
Newcastle was the first non-Sydney town to take up the code in 1909 in its own domestic competition, which was boosted by the participation of the Newcastle Rebels in the NSWRL Sydney competition in 1908 and 1909. The Illawarra region followed in 1910, but further away from Sydney it took longer for the code make any impact.
By the time the match was made a permanent fixture, interest in the concept was high enough to make it sustainable. However, similar to State of Origin before 1980, Country Rugby League faced the problem of its major players being snapped up by the richer Sydney clubs, draining the regional representative sides. This assisted City's domination of the fixture.
It was not until 1987, with the recent inclusions of Canberra, Illawarra and Newcastle in the NSWRL competition, that the "player drain" issue was addressed. The Origin rule, which was also used to revive the State of Origin concept, proved invaluable in giving Country the player base it needed to compete with the City team. However, Country only recorded their first win five years after the concept was introduced, in 1992.
Country then won three out of the five years after their first Origin victory before the City vs Country concept was removed from the representative scene as a result of the Super League War.
The competition was not revived until four years later, when the National Rugby League saw the match's value in terms of media exposure, television ratings and the merit of taking the fixture to country towns (the last time the game was played in Sydney was 1993 at Parramatta Stadium while the last full time NRL ground to host the game was WIN Stadium in Wollongong.
The last fixture was played in Mudgee on 7 May 2017, with more NRL games being played in regional New South Wales instead.

City vs Country results

Overall summary

Games played: 93
TeamWinsLossesDraw
City Origin68223
Country Origin22683

Year by year

The table below shows the results of the annual City vs Country games from 1928 to the present day. The colour of the year denotes the team that has won or retained the shield.
1928Country35City34
1929City16Country5
1930Country35City26
1931City17Country15
1932City27Country14
1933City47Country16
1933City17Country17
1934City28Country14
1934City32Country29
1935City20Country5
1936City41Country8
1937Country20City12
1937Country15City5
1938City42Country12
1939City38Country17
1940City28Country10
1941City44Country21
1942Country14City11
1943City37Country25
1944City17Country10
1945City41Country12
1946City31Country10
1947City33Country10
1948City28Country13
1948Country10City6
1949City23Country2
1950City51Country13
1951City24Country6
1952City23Country21
1953Country28City27
1954City50Country9
1955City31Country18
1956City32Country17
1957City53Country2
1958City55Country14
1959City37Country7
1960City22Country2
1961Country19City5
1962Country18City8
1963City35Country11
1964City27Country4
1965City32Country2
1966City18Country14
1966Country16City12
1967City17Country16
1968City34Country14
1969City27Country20
1970City22Country18
1971City17Country0
1972City35Country6
1973City33Country17
1974City23Country0
1975Country19City9
1976City47Country0
1977City36Country0
1978City30Country13
1979City39Country0
1980City55Country2
1981City38Country7
1982City47Country3
1983City30Country13
1984City38Country12
1985City18Country12
1986City34Country16

2017 City vs Country Match

Squads

1 - Euan Aitken was originally selected to play but withdrew due to injury. Mitchell Aubusson was shifted from Second Row to Centre and Aitken was replaced by Daniel Alvaro.

Match details

Women's City vs Country Origin

The Women's City vs Country Origin is the Women's rugby league version of the game and has been running since 2017.

2017 Women's City vs Country Match

Squads

Match details