Matty Johns

I was telling him last night how strong the Wollongong competition and Newcastle competition used to be.

Mate, they were only half a step down from NRL.

And then like in the mid-'80s, me and Andrew used to go in the sheds.

Remember, we'd come down and watch Mick Schofield play and Don Schofield, his dad, would take us into the sheds after the game.

I started playing off the bench in 92, but we never played the Tigers.

I missed Block just by a little bit.

We played a trial game in 93 in New Zealand, and Block had just retired.

I remember looking across the halfway and going, Jesus, that's Benny, that's Cyril.

Yeah.

In recording this block, Origin was displayed last night.

Everything's been said about that.

We don't need to go over it again.

But I want to talk about, we want to have a yarn about your Origin experience block.

And, mate, they were the days where everybody knew, everyone who was sitting watching, everyone who was playing, knew in the first set of six it was on.

Exactly.

Wow.

Evolution of the game, mate.

But that game you're talking about, the SCG, it's like early in the game, the ball was just irrelevant.

Like it was just tearing to each other.

On that blocker, we've been talking about origin.