Joe Gorman's Heartland: How rugby league explains Queensland tells a tale of loss and rebirth beginning with the decline of Brisbane's rugby league competition and North Queensland's Foley Shield through the rise of State of Origin and the success of the Broncos and the Cowboys in the NRL.

Gorman shows how important rugby league is to the state and he begins with an interview of Bob Katter in his Canberra office.

"As I entered he (Katter) burst into a song for Wally Lewis and then spoke at length about his life as a rugby league player, administrator and fan," Gorman wrote.

Gorman's own interest in League dates from his birth in Brisbane and although his family soon moved to the Blue Mountains in NSW he still supported the Broncos and the Maroons.

He said league was the one sport that united all Queenslanders across the state.

"It is similar to soccer in Brazil or baseball in the USA, in that it can tell you a lot about a people, a culture and a way of being. It is more secular religion than sport," he wrote.

In North Queensland the Foley Shield was a big part of the story with "teams from Mount Isa to Mackay in fierce competition".

He quoted one journalist who said the Shield "is to North Queensland what the Opera House is to Sydney."

The four Mount Isa clubs Wanderers, Black Stars, Brothers and Town provided players to the Foley Shield team and footballers like Vern and Frank Daisy who might have been booed at club level by rival fans became legends in the Foley Shield.

Vern Daisy moved from Palm Island to Mount Isa in the 1960s to work in the mines, planning to stay for 12 months but ending up there for 30 years.

Parramatta coach Jack Gibson tried to sign him but Vern replied, "no Jack, thanks for the offer mate, but I don't like the city."

He played his final Shield game in 1987 for Cloncurry lining up with brother Frank to beat Proserpine in the B Grade Final.

Gorman said Daisy's departure from the game symbolised the end of an era when North Queensland footballers could stay at home and become household names.

For younger generation players like Scotty Prince the lure of the big city was too strong and the Foley Shield diminished in quality, with even North Queensland looking to join the growing national league.

North Queensland did have a representative team in the 1980s and Gorman tells the amusing story of when Wally Lewis came to Mount Isa in 1982 to play for Valleys against them.

Gorman said Mount Isa was very isolated at the time but fiercely proud of their rugby league team with players given good jobs in the mines and the league oval named for Mount Isa Mines executive Julius Kruttschnitt.

Krutschnitt Oval was the venue for the 1982 clash with 3000 people present "marinated in alcohol".

Even the cherry-picker driver responsible for hoisting 4BC commentator John McCoy onto the roof of the grandstand was drunk, Gorman said.

On the field referee Barry Gomersall turned a blind eye to brawls on the field, The King was kept quiet and North Qld won 16-14.

"Valley players stayed in town afterwards to drink with the locals and sign autographs for their children," Gorman wrote.

"In his match report for Rugby League Week McCoy described the occasion as an exercise in diplomacy and 'the day the West was won'."