Amid the well-deserved hype surrounding the first 2017 State of Origin game on Wednesday night, Fairfax Media has a request of sports fans.

We ask you simply to pause and consider who made this great football spectacle happen. Not the sponsors, not the highly paid managers, not the coaches, not the gyms, not the NRL clubs; not even the players did it all by themselves.

This year we salute the people of Kiama, Orange and Gulgong; and a big call-out to the good burghers of Tuggeranong, Wollongong and especially Old Bar near Taree.

For them the Blues' big game in Brisbane against the Maroons is more than state versus state, more than mate versus mate. It's personal.

Those rural and regional areas can claim ownership of seven NSW players: Brett Morris, James Maloney, Josh Jackson, Josh Dugan​, Wollongong pair Tyson Frizell and Jack Bird, and Boyd Cordner​. Seven out of the 17-strong Blues squad were born outside Sydney in towns and suburbs that don't always have the best facilities but usually have the best sense of community and family.

Like so many sports, rugby league survives because of its grassroots: the volunteers and parents who spend hours supporting their children to learn the benefits of fitness, teamwork and community participation. And the communities away from the limelight are usually the ones that work hardest.

This year State of Origin is extra special for those towns for two reasons.

One is that the last annual City-Country Origin game has been played. After a history going back to 1928, no more will the people of NSW be able to watch their own represent their hometowns on a much bigger stage. It's a sad decision brought on by neglect and a failure to recognise that grassroots country rugby league is essential to the big-money city teams. That makes Origin's country connections all the more important in 2017 and beyond.

The second reason this Origin is special starts in the story of a kid who, according to his plumber dad Chris, always had a high pain threshold. The kid's mum died from cancer when he was four. He grew up with his dad and elder brother in a mid-north coast village – they still call it a village despite a surge in development in the past decade. Sports such as footy and surf lifesaving are the only things that keep a lot of children there on the straight and narrow. They play footy on a home ground everyone from Raymond Terrance to Urunga knows as "The Graveyard".

Boyd Cordner is that country kid who started playing in the Old Bar Pirates under-6s and now, at age 24, is NSW State of Origin captain. If he can captain his state, then so can John and Mario and Liam who'll be running around in the under-9s for Backofwoopwoop next Saturday.

Unlike his 34-year-old city-born predecessor Paul Gallen, Cordner is quietly spoken. He apologised to reporters on Monday for not having any headline-grabbing quotes or punchlines. He even said he respected the Queensland players.

It's hard to hold back the tears when reading the Herald's report last week about how Cordner's first text after being appointed NSW skipper read, "I hope she's proud of me". The "she" was his late mum Lanai, and the recipient was Donna Mason, the woman Cordner calls "Sydney mum". She looked after Cordner when he moved to Sydney to play for the Roosters as a 16-year-old. He stayed with her family for five years.

Cordner becomes the ninth Blues captain out of 18 to be born in rural and regional NSW. He joins Trent Barrett from Temora, Laurie Daley from Junee, Kurt Gidley from Newcastle, Andrew Johns from Cessnock, Gavin Miller from Inverell, Steve Mortimer from Wagga Wagga, Tommy Raudonikis​ from Bathurst and Danny Buderus​ from Taree, just up the road from Old Bar.

All those country kids ended up in the NRL playing for the big bucks, but the people who coached them in the juniors, gave them lifts to games, baked the cakes for the fundraising stall and manned the sausage sizzles: they are the ones who deserve a medal.

And they deserve a NSW victory on Wednesday night.

Go the Blues!