We sat the four rugby league legends and Classic Sportswear ambassadors down at Balmain’s Dry Dock Hotel to chat all things rugby league, but the conversation became quite interesting and revealing once the subject turned to their memories of the State of Origin period of the season during their playing days …

LAURIE DALEY: It’s tougher than regular football; it’s faster. It’s the best. Everyone wants to play for their country, but Origin is the biggest game we have. In terms of the build up, it’s like three grand finals in the middle of the year.

PETER WYNN: Even if the series is won, the third game is still a contest.

PAUL LANGMACK: People who don’t even follow football watch it; the casual viewer will watch it. That’s why they’ll never play Origin on a weekend; you’re competing against AFL, you’re competing against everything.

PETER WYNN: It’s on everybody’s bucket list – to go to a State of Origin game.

GRAEME WYNN: It’s something the other sports can’t emulate.

PAUL LANGMACK: We lost so many series, NSW, initially, and we have a bloke here who was part of the first winning NSW State of Origin team in 1985, the great Peter Wynn. Hey, Wal?

PETER WYNN: I’ll always remember the first training session we had at the SCG. Coach Terry Fearnley came in and his opening line was, “You have the opportunity to do something that no one else has done.” That was the motivation for the whole series.

GRAEME WYNN: Leading up to State of Origin, the Queenslanders in your club side, they’d change. They’d stop talking to you. They were all very standoffish.

LAURIE DALEY: In the lead-up and sort-of during that period and after, depending on who won and lost, you’d come back to club training and it was, not frosty, but you wouldn’t have that same normal, friendly vibe.

PAUL LANGMACK: I remember playing at Lang Park and the Queenslander Tony Currie, who was playing in the centres for the Bulldogs at the time, he tried to bite me! You just hate each other. It’s insane! And afterwards it’s like, “What about that? You tried to bite me! Yeah, yeah, that was good, mate.”

(Header image by Kevin Airs, Inside Sport).