Stevo claims Australians “copied” State of Origin idea from British rugby league

It has often been said that Australian rugby league doesn’t do enough for international rugby league and that is certainly something that former Sky Sports commentator Stevo has claimed, a player who played on both sides of the planet.

“They don’t want to get their head out of the sands because they control it,” Stevo said on the Eddie and Stevo podcast.

“It’s like any business, if you run or own a company that is better than another company then you don’t want to help them.

“It’s ‘we want to be the best and we’ll stay the best.’

“We’ve got to a situation now where the most valuable thing that we’ve had in our game since 1895 was taking on Australian tours, and we’ve allowed that to slip away.”

Stevo’s criticism of the Australians peaked as he said they would rather watch State of Origin than an international game.

Often viewed as the peak of rugby league as a spectacle, Stevo even claimed it was an idea they copied from British rugby league.

“A lot of the Australians now say that they’d rather watch the State of Origin series because they’ve built it up,” he said.

“They built it up as a way to intensify and prepare themselves for the international games, it was just a copy of our county championship.”