Darren witnessed one of Origin’s most shameful events. It made him a better man

Miracles, as every Maroons fan knows, are real. They happen.

When a Brisbane special school teacher, Darren Groth, met a Canadian resort worker, Wendy Fraser, on the Great Barrier Reef, their chemistry was immediate. So Groth took a chance.

As he describes it, he “threw a speculator out to the wing” and asked her on a date.

Within months the two were living together. But while Fraser quickly learnt that her boyfriend was a fan of this strange local custom called State of Origin, she had yet to witness the Jekyll-and-Hyde transformation that could take him over during the games.

Groth planned to inoculate Fraser to his “Maroon lunacy” gradually, intending to be on his best behaviour during a viewing of Origin Game I at his parents’ house in Mitchelton.

Things were on track that night for a Queensland defeat. “I’d been behaving myself fairly impeccably to that point,” Groth recalls.

“They’re down 12-4, with about five minutes to go, and they score [Carne, with a Meninga conversion] to bring it back to 12-10.

“Now I’m in real trouble – because there’s hope.

“And famously, it goes through something like 16 pairs of hands. Alf [Langer] plays a huge role in that, Mal Meninga plays a huge role in that – and then Mark Coyne scores in the corner. They went 75 metres to score the try. And the famous call from Ray Warren is: ‘That’s not a try, that’s a miracle.’”

It was May 23, 1994.

“Which was like, completely nuts. Maybe the greatest single-game Origin win in Queensland history, and that’s her first experience of watching a game with me? Obviously, I lost my mind completely.”

The hero of one of T.S. Eliot’s poems, J. Alfred Prufrock, famously measured his life out with coffee spoons. Darren Groth has measured out his with State of Origin clashes.

Realising this, he has written his first non-fiction book after nine novels: Marooned: A Memoir of Fandom, Fatherhood, and the Far Side of the World.

Telling Groth’s story from childhood to university, work, love, heartache, a stop-start literary career, to beginning a new life in Canada and beyond, the book pegs each milestone to a memorable game in the journey that is the epic rivalry between the Maroons and the Blues.

It’s a very funny book, wise to masculine foibles, and conveys the excitement of some of Origin’s greatest moments. In short, it does for NRL and Origin what Nick Hornby’s Fever Pitch does for soccer.

“I always wanted it to be like Fever Pitch, or Helen Garner’s The Season – a work of literary merit – because I thought that space really hadn’t been explored in rugby league,” Groth says. “Something from a fan’s perspective.”

The fuel driving the book, however, was Darren’s father, Des Groth. In 2020, Des was diagnosed with multiple myeloma, a cancer of the white blood cells. Marooned was begun as a tribute to the man who showed him the very first State of Origin on Betamax videotape, and took him to see his first Origin at Lang Park in 1983. (“We boarded the train to Milton,” Darren writes: “... a destination that, in a very real sense, I would never fully return from.”)

“I was between novels at that time and that was really the impetus – I needed to write this, for myself, for Dad, for our family.”

Darren still cringes with guilt at the memory of threatening to belt his dad as a teenager. He doesn’t recall what the argument was about, but the look of devastation on Des’ face has never left him. That look flashed into his mind on May 31, 1988 – a day that lives in Origin infamy.

In the 62nd minute of game two at Lang Park, a dispute between Greg Conescu and Phil Daley became a brawl. Referee Mick Stone sent Conescu and Daley off, but when Wally Lewis tried to argue that his hooker should not have been penalised, the Emperor was himself sin-binned.

And that’s when it started raining beer cans in Stone’s direction. Groth was as incensed as anyone, and prepared to hurl a two-thirds full XXXX onto the field. But the memory of his dad’s face held him back.

“He was one of the fans who never booed a Blue. He went to see great rugby league, and the idea of throwing a can at somebody at a game would never have occurred to him.

“I didn’t throw a can, but that didn’t make me any better – I wanted to throw it. It was only the old man’s face that stopped me.

“I understood at that moment that I’d always need some sort of mitigation to stop me from descending into the dark forces of being a fan.”

Des’ diagnosis was bleak, but his prognosis was excellent. In fact, when I meet Darren at the Caxton Hotel – he’s visiting from Vancouver – it’s his dad who has dropped him off there.

“They caught it so early, he’s going great, so, we’re really, really fortunate,” Darren says. “Many sons say things about their father, but they’re saying it at their funeral. I felt like I got a reprieve.”

We’re on one of the tall tables near the bar on a rainy Wednesday afternoon. The next day the place will be heaving for the start of Magic Round, but today it’s eerily quiet: the calm before the storm. Only the portrait of Allan Langer to overhear us.

As Groth explains in the book, the Little General was one of his guiding lights.

“Alf being small, there was this idea that he wasn’t built for the game. So Langer was an example to me of how you can defy the odds. Because I wasn’t built to be a novelist.”

Groth’s first book was finished in 1997. He likens the experience of sending it to literary agents to Kevin Walters’ unexpected downfield kick two minutes from the end of Origin I the following year – a Hail Mary that turned the tables in Queensland’s favour.

Literary agents didn’t bite, but one – one of the biggest – sent Groth a personal note of encouragement. “It’s still one of the best feelings I’ve ever had in writing – that idea of, I’m not wasting my time.”

His first published work, Most Valuable Potential, was nominated for a 2004 Queensland Premier’s Literary Award. A later young adult novel, Are You Seeing Me?, was selected by the Children’s Book Council, the Prime Minister’s Literary Awards, and shortlisted for important prizes in Canada.

He became a Canadian citizen in 2012, a proud “Canozzie”. But it meant he had to watch from afar as Queensland’s glorious dynasty unfolded, seeing only the first of eight consecutive Queensland wins in the Southern Hemisphere.

Marooned recounts Groth hilariously trying to retain a Wi-Fi connection while sitting on the toilet of a British Columbian basement at 4am while Johnathan Thurston lines up a conversion at Telstra Stadium, literally a world away.

Wendy, of course, forgave Groth his fandom, and (spoiler) married him; their kids are now adults. Do the twins share Groth’s passion for Origin?

“They don’t. And that’s kind of good, because I’m not sure what I would be passing down to my kids would be as pristine as what my father passed on to me. He passed on something quite honourable.

“I’m insufferable to watch a game with. I will shout at the screen, I’ll be telling the players what to do even though I never played a minute of my life.”

“I’m insufferable to watch a game with. I will shout at the screen.”

Insufferable or not, he will be watching Game I, 2026 avidly on May 27 with Des and the extended family in Brisbane. Few of his nearest and dearest are diehard fans, although his younger brother, Simon Groth, a noted experimental author in his own right, is a late convert.

Perhaps it’s just as well that the bandaid was ripped off early when Wendy witnessed Darren lose his mind watching Queensland’s Miracle Game.

“The irony was, we actually lost the series! No one remembers the result of the ’94 series. But everyone remembers the Miracle Try. And that’s because Queensland is Origin. And that will always be the case.”

Marooned: A Memoir of Fandom, Fatherhood and the Far Side of the World by Darren Groth is out now from Hawkeye Publishing, $34.99.