I was on crutches. I’d fallen off my fishing boat in Strahan. You might think drowning was the result, but the boat was on the slip at the time. So I wasn’t dead, but instead had a cracked hip.

My wife, Trish, and I were flat stony broke because of my stupidity, but I really wanted to go to the big State of Origin match between Tasmania and the Victoria. It was on June 24, 1990. I’d still be on crutches, but my hip was almost mended and Trish thought it would be good for both of us.

She was happy with this despite knowing nothing of Aussie Rules except what she had picked up sipping champagne in the Channel Seven box at the SCG in the Edelsten years. We had met when we were both working at Channel Seven, though I never made it to the box. And, yes, like most of the female population of Sydney, Trish admired Warwick Capper’s tight, short-shorts. I imagine that they were popular with the gay community in Oxford Street at the time, too.

Now, 10 years later, and married, we lived in an old terrace within walking distance of North Hobart, the ground the match was to be held at, but we didn’t think I could go that far on crutches, so we splurged on a cab. And then we managed to get me round to a spot on the hill beneath the temporary TV scaffolding towers. North Hobart was mostly hill then; still is really, but nothing big is played there anymore.

For the big match things, had been set up like the TV towers and other things which looked like construction huts on stilts. We could get up on to the lowest cross-beams of the TV scaffolding and have a great view of the match. So we relaxed about not being able to see, which had bothered us, given my injury. And we had a thermos of some alcoholic mixture to fortify us, so we were well set up.

We were about five metres from one of the huts on stilts, which turned out to be the coaches’ box for the Vics. This was revealed as the coaches came up through the respectful, but jocular crowd just before the start.

The coaches were Ron Barassi, Ted Whitten and David Parkin. All three, absolute legends of the game. Fair dinkum, gold-plated, 24-carat heroes. Strewth, I thought, the Vics are taking this seriously, and I also confess to being slightly star-struck. You don’t get so close to creatures of mythology often, and Barass, Teddy and Parko were certainly enshrined in Aussie Rules mythology and legend. And there they were, within touching distance.

The crowd parted respectfully, but there was a bit of chiaking which the legends took in good part, and gave some back. They were confident and, like Napoleon on the morning of Waterloo, sure that this was going to be an affaire d’un dejeuner. A doddle.

The ball was bounced and we were under way. About two minutes in to the game, Trish, caught up in a moment, yelled at me, “James Parker, that umpire doesn’t know what he’s doing.” She was an instant convert, had an intuitive feel for the game and a good orthodox football morality. “A woman of great depth,” I thought, despite being brought up as a Rabbitoh in South Sydney.

The first quarter did not go as scripted: Tassie had the better of it and turned four goals in front at quarter time. Parkin, Whitten and Barassi had to go down through the crowd to address their players at quarter time and then to come back through the Tassie supporters to their coaches’ box. As they did so, the crowd parted and were pretty quiet. The legends were now seriously engaged with what they were there for – organising their players and winning the game, and the crowd respected that. But the mood was still fairly light and everyone was cheerful. Nothing was on the line just yet. The legends were still smiling.

In the second quarter, the Vics, as expected, came surging back and led by a point at half-time. Paul Hudson – son of another total legend, Peter Hudson – was playing well on wing/half-forward, and Alistair Lynch was holding the Victorian full-forward, Longmire, pretty well – he’d hardly had a kick by half-time, and was eventually switched to the backs. The single Tassie-based player in the side, Scott Wade (on the other wing, from memory) wasn’t being out-classed either, though many had expected him to be. He was getting kicks, making breaks and holding his own against his more glamorous (and far more highly paid) opponents.

At half-time, Parkin, Barassi and Whitten went off to the rooms to address the Victorian players. They went off looking serious and came back looking very serious indeed. They were not happy, and I think the Vics had got a spray. But it didn’t work. In the third quarter (they call it the championship quarter – God knows why) Tasmania worked their way in front – 20 points in front – and when the legends went down at three-quarter time they were dark.

I don’t mean just a bit dark, I mean deep black.

In the last quarter, Tassie blew the Vics away. They just outclassed them. Paul Hudson, amongst others, went nuts and in the end it was comprehensive. Thirty-three points. Five and a half goals. You can’t call that a fluke; that’s a good solid win. And the legends knew it. As they came down through the – now disrespectful - crowd for the last time, they were crestfallen – not angry, but a bit sad. Even Teddy Whitten, who championed the State of Origin concept for Aussie Rules, couldn’t quite believe that the Vics had been done by Tassie. It was a moment – a moment in football history. And I think they knew it.

I think they might even have appreciated it.

Ron Barassi became the first inductee to the Football Hall of Fame, Parkin is still commentating on the game, but poor old Ted Whitten went blind and then died, sadly before Footscray won their only premiership, in 2016 since he was part of the Bulldogs who took the ultimate prize in 1954.

In the absence of a Tasmanian theme song, they played Up There Cazaly about 20 times as we left the ground. They could have played it 90 times as far as I was concerned. I knew the man who wrote it, Mike Brady, in my earlier life, and I just I love it – I always have. And, it was completely appropriate because Roy Cazaly, the great South Melbourne full-forward, was Tasmanian. It was a moment of complete Tassie nationalism, and I don’t regret it one bit. The underdogs must be allowed to revel in their occasional triumphs, surely?

I don’t recall how we got home to our Warwick St terrace. I may have been wafted home on a wave of euphoria. It was an amazing Saturday night. People from all over mainland Australia rang to congratulate us on Tassie’s win. In modern terms, it had gone viral.

One Sydney call was from an old colleague, a cameraman, to whom I had given two hundred bucks, eight years before in another world. I’d lent it to him because he was short of cash one Friday night and he wanted to buy cocaine (this was the ‘80s and the film industry) but he’d never repaid me. I was pleased that he was thinking of Trish and me, but asked if he could repay the debt – him being still in extremely well-paid work and me being skint. I never got the money, but I wouldn’t change that earlier world – where 200 bucks wasn’t a big deal – for the one Trish and I have managed to create in my home state (although at times 200 bucks has seemed a fortune).

Whatever happens, please remember, do remember, that once, just once, all those years ago – we beat the Vics. Up There Cazaly!

James Parker is a Tasmanian historian (but with deep connections to Sydney), who writes and talks on mainly colonial subjects – especially convicts, women and the Tasmanian Aboriginal people.