Australia's premier sporting events, attracting a huge television audience and usually selling out the stadiums in which the games are played. From 2012-2021, an Under 20s State of Origin match was held annually on the same weekend as the Australia vs New Zealand test. This has now been changed to Under 19s. Women's State of Origin has been held since 1999, and in 2021 an Under 19s Women's series was introduced. City vs Country Origin is an annual Australian rugby league match that takes place in New South Wales between teams made up of NRL players representing 'City' (Sydney metropolitan area) and 'Country' (all areas in NSW outside the Sydney metropolitan area). The Affiliated States Championship is an annual competition involving four affiliated states (Victoria, South Australia, Northern Territory and Western Australia) plus representative sides from the Australian Police and Australian Defence Force. Demographics of the game Total participation In an interview for a Sydney Morning Herald article in 2021, Chairman of the Australian Rugby League Commission, Peter V'landys, revealed yearly rugby league participation figures from 2015 to 2021. These participation figures show that national participation in 2019 (the last year before COVID-19 disruption) for males was 147,723 of whom 83,400 were located in New South Wales. National participation figures in 2019 for females was 14,958 with 7,108 were located in New South Wales. By the time of the article in 2021, national participation figures for males had declined to 143,792 whilst national participation for females had increased to 16,899. In 2021, a total of 30,648 students in metropolitan, regional and remote Australia from 354 schools participated in rugby league. The NRL 2008 Annual report included significantly higher school participation figures suggesting either a substantial decline of 89% or a more generous definition was applied when measuring participants historically. Women in rugby league The vast majority of rugby league participants are male. Of the 172,000 participants in 2004, 5% were female. National participation figures released in 2021 show female participants number 16,899 accounting for 10.52% of the total national participation number of 160,691. The Australian Women's Rugby League was formed in 1993, which only achieved affiliation with the Australian Rugby League in 1998. This is in contrast to the men's competition which has existed since 1908. The lack of female-participation in Australian rugby league can mostly be attributed to the predominantly masculine culture which discourages women from playing, and provides