Reviewed by Matt O’Hanlon (Prop by the Sea)
It is July 5, 2006. Just after 8.50 pm, Darren Groth feels isolated. He is marooned. New South Wales lead Queensland and this is his last game watching Queensland play Origin with his Dad and family for the foreseeable future in Queensland. Early in the second half the game was going to go the way of the Blues. Then New South Wales score and lead 14-4. Darren is done. He moves to the isolation of his bedroom. The contest seems like a sham. A convoluted win with the odds stacked with southern bias against his beloved Maroons. His Dad pleads with him to stay, but it is too much!
This defining last game was going in the opposite direction to how he’d planned. At 14-4 he decides he’s had enough. He is marooned. But as the minutes click on, there is no sound from the lounge. In his isolation, he thinks of his ‘fan cowardice.’ How he has let the team down. How this loss is rubbing salt into wounds he can no longer tolerate. But then he decides to leave the sanctity of, in his words, his ‘fortress of solitude,’ to return for the ‘sooks last stand’. Back with his Dad to watch the last of the last.
Queensland score through a brilliant try by Brent Tate to narrow the margin: 14-10. Suddenly, Queensland is back. His Dad’s hand says welcome back son! But now NSW has control with limited time to go. The infamous pass from Hodgson drifts forward, missing its intended target, and Darren grabs the ball, runs away and scores. Wild celebration. Gone is the sulking Darren of 10 minutes earlier marooned in his room fearing the worst. Now an invigorated Darren completely Marooned by an amazing victory. The other Darren is obviously the great Darren Lockyer, forever etched in Origin history for that try he scored as our captain in the 77th minute of Game 3, 2006.
The author of his memoir Marooned, Darren Groth, has written a beautifully crafted book that intertwines his life with family and friends ever so delicately with his support of the maroon jersey and the cause. Groth has the reader constantly juggling with, and on multiple levels of what marooned means to him and to many Queenslanders. But that does not discount its appeal to the broader public. Whether you come from NSW, or anywhere else for that matter, whether you are a Rugby League tragic or not, or whether you have a disdain for sports books, Marooned, has something for you. The deep human meaning sitting behind this almost rabid fandom engages you and is a story that resonates with all of us.
From Groth’s family being, marooned in north-western Queensland in the `60s through his Dad’s work with Queensland Rail where family was paramount and Rugby League was a relief according to Groth from ‘a soul sapping environment.’ So many families, including my own, understand the critical place sport has in country towns as an entry point into the community. Rugby League in the North not only fueled Groth’s imagination but built the deep and lasting bond with his Dad. By 1976, when the family was back in Brisbane, Groth and his Dad shared another great footy memory – the Wests v Easts Grand Final at Lang Park. A 16-1 victory for their team, Wests.
Groth, like many of us, was aware that Queensland was severely disadvantaged when it came to the annual interstate series. We were all brought up with the notion that the Blues took our best players because of their club’s access to profits from poker machines. The concept of State of Origin in 1980 was something else. Dad Des arrives home and whispers to his ten-year-old son, ‘We won mate –20-10′. A whisper turning to a shout across Queensland on a night we all remember where we were when Artie led us out! Groth did not make the first game but was at the 1981 victory with his Dad embedding a family passion for Maroon. In some ways, he would never be alone again. Especially when Queensland won!
Groth’s ability to patch Origin matches into his life and share emotions that not only embody the life of a devoted sports fan but the relationships that surround it, is the real story. As a diehard Maroons fan myself, I found it extremely easy to get caught up in the moment of each game. The reliving and visualizing each moment as Groth describes it is so very easy, but the essence of his work is that the sport is only the thread that combines our relationships, our friends, and our families. Groth allows for a deal of introspection, neatly tied to key moments in his life and the Maroons. His Dad and Mum. His Mates. His Wife. His work – teaching and writing – his children. Disability. Covid. His Expatriation. Death. All aligned with love, fear, happiness, loathing, rejection, and detachment.
This becomes the real essence of Marooned. Groth goes through the meeting of his wife Wendy and the intimate detail of how it really was a case of love at first sight. He goes into the fact that she was from another country, Canada, and was prepared to make Queensland her home and by de facto become a Maroons supporter. How they embraced the importance of every State of Origin match with family and friends, and the sideline importance of those matches with his father. His father’s devotion to the cause of Maroon. His work as a teacher in disability settings, and the shared understandings of immigrant students on supporting your team. How he and his wife struggled to have children and eventually did. Twins. A cherished daughter and son. Maroons at birth, and the opportunity for a replay of his own experience. The son was born with autism and this challenge led him to feel the government failed him and his family in supporting disability. The family moved to his wife’s native Canada, where Groth believed their systems and supports for autism were a lot better than those that we had in Queensland. Marooned.
At the same time, Groth was fully committed to being a writer. From Canada, we follow the ups and downs of an author and again, they are closely related to the ups and downs of the Maroons. Unable to watch games in Canada, restless nights were spent trying to sleep, even after his Wendy’d gentle ’Queenslander’ whisper to make all OK. He would await the score as scared as the child he once was, to see it the following morning. His father’s religious sending of tapes of the games allowed his marooned Origin fandom to survive, but Groth could only bring himself to watch the games that Queensland had won.
His game against publishers followed the same difficulties as any match that the Maroons played. And finally, just as Queensland rode the wave of success, so too did Groth, with the publication of several of his books.
Like many, who see 1980 as a watershed moment in their sporting fandom, Groth gets to the essence, through his Maroon obsession of what it means to be a father, a son, a husband, a mate and more importantly not to be one-eyed. Just make sure one eye is white and one is maroon!
Marooned features an introduction by QRL CEO and Maroons Legend Ben Ikin.
DARREN GROTH lives in Canada and will be touring Australia on publication in May 2026.
Marooned will be launched at Riverbend Books on May 20. All welcome. Details HERE.
MAROONED
A MEMOIR OF FANDOM, FATHERHOOD, AND THE FAR SIDE OF THE WORLD
DARREN GROTH
Hawkeye Publishing | 20 May 2026 | $34.99 | Original Paperback
Read more about Marooned:
Marooned: A memoir of fandom, fatherhood, and the far side of the world
Pre-orders https://hawkeyebooks.com.au/collections/coming-soon/products/marooned
Thanks Prop. I have had the chance to read Darren’s book. As you point out, it’s certainly not just a book about a sport. Good sports books rarely are. It’s a reminder of how sport and life are entwined, or can be entwined. It’s also a real trip for those of us who have lived State of Origin from the outset.