Letter From Australia: There was a friendly clash of cultures when four Queenslanders sat down for drinks with a Victorian (your correspondent) at the Standard Hotel in the inner Melbourne suburb of Fitzroy during the week. Talk turned to sport (we were nearly on to our second beer) and a gulf was evident.

Three of the Queenslanders were in Melbourne to attend the annual national veterinary conference. The other Queenslander, a sportswriter, had been in the Victorian capital for several years and so eased the parties through difficulties of understanding, of which there were a few.

The Queensland vets (only one of them, the richest, had a country drawl) had been on a tour of the Melbourne Cricket Ground (MCG), which is Australia's premier sporting stadium; they planned to go to back there to see the Australian Football League (AFL) match between Victorian rivals Hawthorn and St Kilda on Saturday night. (The Hawks won; the Saints, clearly, are no good).

They being Queenslanders, Australian football was not in their blood; they were to go to an AFL match at the MCG as a pilgrimage to a venue rather than an expression of any desire to see a game of the indigenous football code.

They being Queenslanders, the highlight of their week was going to the small, nondescript Olympic Park stadium, just off Melbourne's Yarra River, last Monday night to see a National Rugby League (NRL) game between Melbourne Storm and Sydney's Canterbury Bulldogs.

The Queenslanders were impressed enough by the Olympic Park crowd, which, at 11,000, was what would be expected at an NRL game in the northern states. Their other comment on the crowd was that almost all the spectators were New Zealanders, expatriates who cherish the Storm as a link to the rugby mania of their homeland.

In the pub, the Queensland vets asked whether born-and-bred Melbourne people were at all interested in the Storm. I admitted I'd never been to a game. My ex-Queensland sportswriter colleague, who was brought up with rugby league, also admitted he'd never been to a Storm game.

This might have been forgivable. But when I admitted I knew no one in Melbourne who'd ever been to a Storm game, there was outrage. A third bottle of red was summoned.

Melbourne Storm is a strong club. It won the league premiership in 1999 and has been a regular finalist since. By the reckoning of the Queensland vets, the Storm should be recognised in Melbourne, as it is in the northern states, as one of the leading sports clubs in the country.

The reason for the lack of interest in Melbourne Storm from the city it represents, I explained, is that Victoria is dominated by Australian football to the detriment of all other football codes, with the recent exception of soccer. There's a small but strong rugby union competition, and the occasional Wallabies match in Melbourne heralds an unseemly frenzy of corporate lunches, but there's no rugby league culture to speak of. Not one Melbourne Storm player is from Victoria, nor is a Storm player likely to hail from Victoria in the near future.

The Storm team comprises Queenslanders, Kiwis and the occasional Papua New Guinean, all of whom have been lured to Melbourne by healthy pay packets and a strong administration.

Another reason the Storm's Queensland players don't mind being based in Melbourne is that they can still play in their sport's biggest matches, the three games of the annual state-of-origin series between Queensland and New South Wales.

Rugby league's state-of-origin series is the product of a cultural cringe. For almost a century, until the advent of a national competition, the Sydney-based New South Wales rugby league competition was the strongest. Queenslanders headed south to Sydney to test themselves against the best.

In time, Queensland rugby league fans grew incensed at their state's drain of talent. State-of-origin series were concocted to give Queenslanders the chance to represent their home state in matches that were the best - and most ferocious - rugby league matches in the world.

The first state-of-origin match was held in 1980 at Brisbane's Lang Park. When the Queensland forward Artie Beetson floored his NSW opponent Mick Cronin, spectators were beside themselves with glee while home viewers danced around their televisions. Beetson and Cronin played for the same club, Parramatta in Sydney. If they were into each other, it was reasoned, this must be a fair-dinkum contest. The match was a "biff-fest". A legend was born.

After the Queensland vets had seen Melbourne Storm five-eighth Greg Inglis reveal his magic in the Storm's victory over the Bulldogs at Olympic Park, they were nonplussed about Inglis's failure to make this year's Queensland origin squad. A consolation was their belief Queensland's pack would push around the NSW pack.

I was struck by the passion of these otherwise mild-mannered, middle-class vets. In trying to explain their manic support for the Queensland rugby league team, known as the Maroons, they cited the bile that rises to their throats at the sight of Phil Gould, the former NSW player and coach who's now a television commentator.

To Queenslanders, Gould represents all that is reprehensible about New South Wales rugby league. For the Queensland vets to impress on me the depth of their feeling towards Gould, they asked about Australian football commentators from states other than Victoria.

"Who gets on your goat?" they asked.

I had no answer. Television commentators don't overly concern me.

"There must be someone," said the vets, swirling glasses of red.

I explained that, while fans from the other main Australian football states, South Australia and Western Australia, might feel historic grievances against Victoria for attracting their best players, I feel no animosity towards them.

One of the vets affected an air of jest, but the light of inquiry blazed in his eyes.

"But who do you hate?" he demanded.

I felt inadequate. I resolved to watch this year's state-of-origin series. The first match is at Brisbane's Lang Park on Wednesday.