CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
After an ordinary start to the year with the pandemic, floods, and election campaigns – both NSW and Queensland residents can take solace in the fact that the State Of Origin is just around the corner.
That was, until they all realised how young the average State of Origin debutants are.
The news that rising NRL star Selwyn ‘The Cherbourg Hornet’ Cobbo will be throwing on a Maroon jersey for next week’s opener has reminded fans on both sides of the Tweed just how old they are getting.
The excitement surrounding the annual best-of-three rugby league series between the New South Wales Blues and the Queensland Maroons, appears to have taken a backseat today, as it becomes evident that Selwyn Cobbo was too young to remember the first half of the Queensland eight-in-a-row Dynasty.
In fact, Cobbo wasn’t even born when the Queensland assistant coach Cameron Smith made his NRL debut in 2002. This is a terrifying fact, considering Smith only retired from playing the game in 2021 – the same year Cobbo first laced up for the Broncos.
Selected on the wing, The Cherbourg Hornet will turn 20 just days before the first Origin match, which means he wasn’t even alive to witness the Sydney Olympics, or Silverchair’s iconic fourth album ‘Diorama’.
In fact, the former school captain of Murgon High hadn’t even hit the ground when the Twin Towers came down.
For any readers who are the same age as Selwyn Cobbo, or younger, the attacks on the New York World Trade Centre is basically viewed as an event that changed the course of history, sending millions of people to war in a number of different countries for the last two decades.
It is informally regarded a ‘9/11’ because it took place on the 11th of September, 2001. Roughly a year before Selwyn Cobbo was born.
But you wouldn’t know that, because you don’t remember a time before 9/11, like the rest of us old codgers do.
Unfortunately for New South Wales this alarming revelation does not take away from the fact that Cobbo has been in red-hot form for the Broncos this year, scoring 10 tries in 12 games.
He’s is also averaging 130 metres per game, and is set to deliver Queensland another eight series in a row. Leshgoooo
