Carlton star taken to hospital as Victoria wins Origin<\/a><\/p>\nVictoria holds off a spirited WA side to win the first Aussie rules State of Origin clash for 27 years, though the game is marred by a serious injury to Carlton star Jacob Weitering.<\/p>\n
It marked the first AFL Origin match since 1999, and the resounding success of its return has already sparked calls for the concept to continue.<\/p>\n
“I would love nothing more than to see this grow,” Scott said.<\/p>\n
“I’m obviously a huge advocate. And I think this has got the potential to be something big.<\/p>\n
“I don’t see any reason why it shouldn’t be every year.<\/p>\n
“Maybe if the player interest does wane a little bit, maybe then you think about adjusting it, but I can’t imagine that being the case.<\/p>\n
“I think it will only grow legs. I mean, as a coach, I think it’s the best time now in pre-season.<\/p>\n
“For example, our players have a practice match against Hawthorn on Monday. I know where I’d rather my players be playing.”<\/p>\n
Importantly, players from both sides went all-out in their attempt to win the game, and a number of the league’s biggest stars have already signalled their desperation to represent their state next year.<\/p>\n
Scott said WA had the “front running” to host Origin again, given the way fans in the state embraced it, but he knew there would be other states knocking down the door to take part.<\/p>\n
“It really has got some potential,” Scott said.<\/p>\n
“If you were a South Australian-aligned player or an Allies-aligned player, you had to watch that game thinking, ‘How can you leave us out of this contest?'”<\/p>\n
Cox is equally optimistic about Origin’s future.<\/p>\n
“I think State of Origin should be every year,” Cox said.<\/p>\n
“It’s for the AFL to work out who plays in that, whether it’s a carnival, whether it’s a standalone game.<\/p>\n
“The WA government, WA Tourism and the WA public showed that they’ll support it no matter what time of the year it comes, and they probably deserve to hold it.”<\/p>\n
Not one AFL star who was fit and eligible to play for either Victoria or Western Australia turned down the opportunity to take part.<\/p>\n
The huge buy-in from players was arguably the biggest reason for the concept’s success, and even the glut of injuries to come out of Saturday’s game did not dampen the excitement.<\/p>\n
Carlton defender Jacob Weitering was taken to hospital with possible neck, rib and shoulder damage after being crunched in a marking contest.<\/p>\n
Adelaide recruit Callum Ah Chee, Port forward Mitch Georgiades and GWS defender Sam Taylor had their games cut short due to hamstring niggles, while Gold Coast’s Brownlow medallist Matt Rowell injured a finger.<\/p>\n
Nevertheless, Hogan said the players had embraced the concept.<\/p>\n
“This year was a little bit of the unknown,” Hogan said.<\/p>\n
“I mean, all the players were excited for it, but we weren’t really sure what to expect.<\/p>\n
“As we were getting closer, as the teams getting announced, the excitement kind of grew.<\/p>\n
“I think everyone that played under-age footy or wants to play for their state or watched tonight. I think this could blossom into something special.<\/p>\n
“There’s absolutely no reason why the players wouldn’t want to buy into this every single year. Hopefully it’s here to stay.”<\/p>\n
AAP<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Winning Victoria coach Chris Scott and his Western Australia counterpart Dean Cox have called for State of Origin…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":480595,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[560],"tags":[5844,638,230332,49082,64,63,55,639,588,85,660,25962],"class_list":["post-480594","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-afl","tag-abc-sport","tag-afl","tag-afl-origin","tag-afl-state-of-origin","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-football-league","tag-australianfootballleague","tag-sport","tag-sports","tag-victoria","tag-wa"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480594","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=480594"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/480594\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/480595"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=480594"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=480594"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=480594"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}