JAMIE HOTTAKE | Outrage | CONTACT
As was revealed in April this year, Queensland fans will not be provided access to their XXXX beer at this year’s State of Origin series.
Instead, they will be served VB, the Victorian beer which has featured on the New South Wales jersey in the Origin arena for many years.
While it is of no surprise that the fair-weathered, cultural abyss of New South Wales would be willing to forgo any form of cultural tradition and cuisine for money – it is one bridge too far to have the staple beer for a traditionally non-rugby league state forced upon the proud people North of the Tweed.
It is much to the angst of not only Queensland fans who won’t be able to consume their beer of choice, but they are to be ridiculed by the new Maroon-coloured cans, as marketing executives from Carlton United Brewers commit what can only be described as the most appalling example of cultural appropriation since Tom Cruise in the last Samurai.
The traditional beer will no longer be on tap this series, with VB instead being named the “beer of origin.”
But what Origin? Victoria has shown their hands as rugby league infant who can’t even produce one player from their grassroots without him taking off to fulfil a Mormon ministerial duties in the peak of his career.
Queensland doesn’t have much. Just our beaches and sporting dynasties, our affordable housing and beloved Maroon colours.
Must this, our precious state representative rugby league strip be paraded across the country as some sort of ‘free pass’ for foreign owned corporations down South to make money out of us during our most sacred Winter ritual.
The faux-Queenslanders, the carpetbaggers, the borrowers. They are not welcome here and they are not getting away with it.
This new deal has landed Queensland Rugby League executives in hot water, as their constitutes begin to question a crisis of management following the NRL’s new sponsorship deal. One that has seen Maroon colours plastered across VB cans right across the country.
Queenslanders are not happy, not because of the taste of this lesser beer, but because of the exploitation. It’s transparent and offensive.
Aside from a minority of Brisbane Lions fans, the scarf-wearing is almost non-existent in Queensland. It is a Victorian cultural practice imported here via Fitzroy. It is not our culture.
We do not take public holidays for horse races, and we ripped up our tram tracks years ago. We are Queenslanders, we are Maroon.
For this reason, we must point out the very real and very problematic elements of allowing Southerners to do what they wish with our colours.
My state representative rugby league jersey is not your beer can.
About the writer: Jamie Hottake is a 29-year-old upper middle class content writer who freelances between several online newspapers who are held afloat entirely by clicks that come from outrage-fuelled topics and listicles about Gaytime-themed novelty ice cream products. As a straight white male that’s never worn high-vis and has never been in a fist-fight, Jamie yearns for a sense of victimhood – but mostly has to settle as an ally for minorities, taking it upon himself to horribly articulate their concerns from his perspective. However, on a rare occasion, Jamie finds himself feeling like an outsider, and is very quick to pen 400 words about his uniqueness and vulnerabilities. He lives in a sharehouse with several musicians in Brisbane’s West End and lives in fear of people finding the photos of him attending a friends fancy dress-themed 18th birthday party in 2005, where he was dressed in blackface.
