'Whoever is in charge of this service needs to get the boot': Fans ...

It’s become one of the great guessing games of State of Origin, up there with how late the kick off will be and how quickly the first stink will come – when will the streaming service break?

9Now, who have exclusive online rights within Australia for Origin, lasted less than a minute before endured its first blackout, with fans around the country losing access to the game.

It’s becoming a tradition: streaming fans typically prefer Foxtel’s Kayo service for NRL games and thus 9Now rarely has to deal with the bulk viewers that tune in for the biggest rugby league event of the year.

Viewers immediately took to social media to vent their frustration.

Some got error messages regarding the ‘unexpected error’ – as if they couldn’t have foreseen that Origin would be popular – while others reported that the entire 9Now website was down.

Some were even kicked out of their accounts and forced to log back in to watch the game.

Naturally, the customer service team at 9 were forced to kick into overdrive to deal with the deluge of unhappy punters on Twitter. “Whoever is in charge of this service needs to get the boot,” wrote one angry user.