In sport especially, it's a trait we're all proud of – and one I've observed repeatedly at Origin clashes at Suncorp-Metway Home Loans At A Ridiculously Cheap 13percent Stadium over the years.
A well-disciplined crowd who hate to see the 10 metre rule infringed by either side; who want only to see clean, legal tackling and, regardless of the scoreboard at the end of the night, and want to enjoy an outing where the greatest game of all is the one true winner.
But not in NSW. And not at Stadium Gosper.
The crowd's partisanship shocked even this veteran sports reporter.
The Blues defenders time and time again – especially those on ref Harrigan's blinder side – were virtually touching the Mighty Maroons attackers by the time the ball was played.
Yet not a murmur from the grandstands.
And yet one solitary Maroon accidentally puts a boot forward during a ponderously slow and sloppy Blues play-the-ball and the stadium roof rocks with howls of protest and demands for a Blues penalty.
A Maroons player takes out a Blues opponent with a copybook ball-and-all chest-high tackle and the crowd bays for a send-off for a dangerous high tackle.
A Maroons player gets his head knocked off in attack – and it's rolling sickeningly all over the playing surface oozing blood everywhere and spoiling the Wizard Home Loans sign – and there's not a murmur of dissent, just Blues fans hugging and tonguing each other in sickening self congratulations for a tackle well made.
Such is the bias at Stadium Gosper that when I made the mistake of standing up and cheering when the Maroons blew out to deserved 14-8 leaders in the second half, even the two coppers who abseiled their way up the stadium stairs to issue a stern warning were dressed in blue!
And what about the two knock-ons that Harrigan missed cause the Mighty Maroons had been camped on the Blues tryline for the past 10 minutes and the match-winning try was only seconds away and the Blues were a shattered disorganised rabble and Harrigan probably had money on NSW.
The vast majority of the stadium were up and cheering while the Maroon players, your correspondent and Queenslanders in TV lounges all over the Sunshine State were left with their jaws wide open in amazement at the injustice of it all.
Let me tell you a little about that second knock-on – the one that every commentator in Australia said was a dead-set true-blue blue from the boofhead Blues but which Harrigan put down to a bad camera angle.
Your correspondent paid $50 to ensure he was under cover as I wanted to enjoy Queensland's win in comfort on a typically Sydney inclement evening. That $50 got me four-fifths of the way up one of the sideline grandstands.
Now Stadium Gosper is designed well enough, but you're still a fair way away from the action. Admittedly, you're in the same suburb – unlike ANZ Stadium – just, but the playing surface appears about a metre wide.
To get some idea about how high and how far you are away, to make a mobile phone call at halftime, I had to walk down to the bleachers at playing level to find signal range.
Up there in the clouds, as the game unfolds, the stadium design means you're watching the action as if through a rectangular periscope.
The fully lit playing surface is framed by the Blues supporters all around you baying for Maroon claret, and the tubular steel cobweb of the roof that stretches out and down above you, seemingly to trackside.
Such is the roof's design that only the bottom bay on the far side – the cheap seats where the $20 entry fee entitles you to get drenched in the first half – are visible.
And the sea of empty turquoise seats on either flank are testimony not so much to the weather but how the game is still struggling to recover from the Dirty Digger's greedy takeover.
Both end zone stands – similar to the two at ANZ Stadium except they're not in Bald Hills and Southport – were next to empty.
But from side on, up near the domestic jets' flight paths, the view is spectacular, even if players are about 2cm tall.
The upside is you get a great aerial view of the players' positions and the never-ending exploitable gaps in the poorly trained Blues defence.
And I'm here to report openly and fairly that even from that distance and even though a descending Qantas evening service from Melbourne momentarily blocked my view, the second knock-on was as bleeding obvious as the smile on Sterlo's dial whenever he slips into a pretty patterned frock.
And sure, being a Maroons supporter – and typical of the Maroons supporters who'll be at the Ground Formerly Known as Lang Park – I've got to show fairness and say that Lam and Co should be booted up the bum and made to holiday in NSW for stopping dead still and expecting a scrum to go down.
That the knock-on was almost as blatant as the forward pass thrown moments later as the Blues motored up-field for their score-levelling non-try is no excuse.
And Gorden Tallis was a deadset goose for mouthing off at Harrigan – an understandable but hot-headed indiscretion that cost his side at the very least a draw.
Tallis was wrong in calling Harrigan a fucking cheat.
In the light of Harrigan's repeated defence ever since that he didn't get the call wrong, Tallis would have been spot on to have called him a fucking liar.
For my guess is that Harrigan missed the dropped ball completely as things were getting rather messy at the time – something that Australia's best league referee is not going to admit to – and that his "knocked back" comment referred to the earlier knock-on or a pick-up bid in a Sydney bar the night before that went horribly wrong.
He compounded the folly by sending off the boofhead Tallis. (Is calling a league player a boofhead a tautology?)
Anyway, the Blues went on to win, proving yet again that 14 New South Welshmen on a field will sometimes beat 12 gallant, gutsy Queenslanders. And then just.
And we'll have to wait until next Wednesday at Lang Park to see what other monumental cockups the nation's top league referee makes – and just hope to God that in the interest of fairness, the Blues cop the one bad call of Harrigan's many that's crucial to the result.
And if it's any consolation to Maroons supporters out there still smarting over the result, I can report that as the big crowd filed out after the match, a passer-by could have been mistaken for thinking Queensland had gone one up.
There were a few groups woop-wooping, for sure, but the vast majority looked as if they were filing out of church after attending their mother's funeral service.
Either that or they realised, courtesy of the blinder that Harrigan put in on their behalf, that their home side had got away with a narrow win that was thoroughly undeserved.
Take heart also from the fact that one thickset and thicker-brained Blues supporter, walking backwards so as to heckle some poor young kid in a Broncos jersey, stumbled into some seats and almost went arse over tit.
That Blues thug was blind in more ways than one, so maybe he's related to Harrigan.
