When I tune in to Channel Nine’s coverage of the Origin just a few hours from now, I’ll be treated to slow-motion replays of big hits and try celebrations while voiceovers tell me I’m about to watch a war, a battle between the best of the best, the pinnacle of rugby league, an ages-old rivalry steeped in hatred.
And I’ll be thinking, please, give it a bloody rest.
Today’s State of Origin is an over-hyped, over-commercialised, watered-down version of what it used to be.
It’s still mate against mate, state against state, but it hasn’t been the best against the best for a fair while now.
And as for it being the closest thing footy has to open warfare? You have got to be kidding me.
Origin is still a cut above any other form of footy. Game three last year is in the top five matches I’ve ever seen – an avalanche of physicality and skill that was a perfect advertisement for rugby league.
Pictured: Maroons skipper Trevor Gillmeister is chaired off after Queensland’s stunning series win in 1995 – when Origin was footy’s unpredictable bad boy, not the safe product it is today
Origin is still electrifying to watch courtesy of stars like NSW pivot Mitchell Moses (pictured in game one this year) – but it has lost the fiery depth of feeling that made it a phenomenon
But it’s becoming a victim of its own success.
It’s also been eroded by wider changes to the game, with the effects rearing their heads so gradually that it’s hard to tell when the rot really started to set in.
Fans are constantly bombarded about Origin for weeks before each match. Who’ll be in the team? Which stars from last year are out because their form’s crap or they’re under a fitness cloud or the coach has just gone off them? Why doesn’t the NRL change everything so the NSW vs Queensland game is the only match that week and we don’t have to see clubs field under-strength sides?
It’s the same thing year after year after year. Except now there’s a diluted, stage-managed quality to it all because none of the players or coaches say anything with meaning anymore.
They sound like politicians who’ve had anything even remotely controversial coached out of them by their coaches and media managers.
To see how bad things have become, you just have to look at what happened last year when NSW coach Michael Maguire made headlines with the most nakedly aggressive comment from an Origin boss in years.
Did he call Queensland soft? Say they’re a pack of banana-bending mongrels? Call them banjo pluckers?
No. He told them to be careful of living in ‘glass houses’ when they criticise the Blues.
Today’s Origin build-ups are about as lively as a budget estimates hearing in the senate now that players have had all the controversy coached out of them – unlike sides of yesteryear like the victorious 1993 Blues (pictured)
Former NSW coach Michael Maguire (pictured) made what now passes for a fired-up Origin statement last year when he warned Queensland against living in ‘glass houses’
If that’s what passes for open warfare between the camps now, god help us all.
We finally got a red-hot Origin controversy this year with Billy Slater’s startling attack on Aaron Woods for calling him a ‘grub’ – but that’s an aberration, a one-off island in a sea of boredom.
If Origin was a soap opera, it wouldn’t make it past the pilot episode with the sorts of scripts fans have been forced to listen to for years on end.
One of the greatest attractions NSW vs Queensland matches held in the past was the fact that you were watching the absolute best players in the world at each position.
The Poms and Kiwis were no competition when they played the Kangaroos. Even the grand final teams all had their weak links thanks to the salary cap.
It’s no wonder English stars like South Sydney’s Burgess boys would wake up at sparrow fart in the UK to watch Origin when it was the ultimate expression of rugby league.
But that hasn’t been the case for quite a while now.
How many games of Origin did Sonny Bill Williams play? Or Sam Burgess? Or James Graham? It’s hard to think of a trio of stars who were better cut out for interstate footy.
Shaun Johnson won the Golden Boot as the best player in the world in 2014. Origin games? Zero.
Some Aussie-born stars have never and will never wear the sky blue or maroon.
Sonny Bill Williams (pictured) and other made-for-Origin stars like Sam Burgess and James Graham were never eligible to play – and the list of top talents who can’t take the field for NSW or Queensland will keep growing
Maroons vs Blues games still feature huge stoushes, like this melee on the sideline in game three last year – but the interstate matches are losing their lustre for other reasons
Victor Radley was born in Sydney, plays exactly the sort of fearless footy that makes a player an Origin coach’s dream, but he decided to represent England, so no interstate footy for him.
The same goes for Addin Fonua-Blake, one of the best props in the game, who was born in north-western Sydney, played junior footy for the Mascot Jets, but ran out for New Zealand in one Test back in 2017, rendering him ineligible.
Thankfully, footy has become far more diverse than it used to be in terms of where its top talent comes from. The brains behind the game have been trying to make it take off in the Land of the Long White Cloud since the 1990s and the effect has been remarkable.
New Zealand will keep producing more absolute guns, like four-time premiership spearhead James Fisher-Harris, Raiders sledgehammer Joe Tapine, Williams and Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.
But none of those talents will play a second of Origin if they represent their country.
So what are we left with when we tune into Nine for the big game now?
Yes, the standard of footy is still incredible, even if refs don’t decide to operate under a different set of rules and put the whistle away anywhere near as much as they used to.
Yes, there are still huge physical confrontations, like the bench-clearing melee in last year’s game three, which saw 10 players charged.
But the depth of feeling isn’t there like it used to be. Origin was the unpredictable, rule-breaking bad boy of footy.
Now it’s safe, a thing to be used as a vehicle to sell not just the NRL, but just about anything else you can think of.
A quick look at today’s player uniforms compared to yesteryear’s is a great case in point.
In game one last month, the Blues ran out in a strip that advertised Westpac (twice), Ampol, Tooheys, Adidas, the Star Casino, McDonald’s and Hyundai.
In 1993, only Tooheys got a run on the Cockroaches’ strip.
Ads are everywhere you look during the telecast. Sponsors’ graphics get wedged in to a ridiculous degree. You’ve got try replays brought to you by a bank, missed tackle counts brought to you by a carmaker, the halftime report brought to you by a fast food business.
I get that the money has to come from somewhere, but this is overkill.
Origin is a very big, very clear point of difference between the NRL and AFL.
For a huge number of Aussie Rules fans, the matches are the only time they take any real notice of rugby league.
Pictured: A flashback to the simpler times of 1993, when Origin stars only had one sponsor on their jerseys and the concept hadn’t been completely turned into a cash cow for the league
NSW star Connor Watson wears this year’s NSW uniform, which features ads for Westpac (twice), Ampol, Tooheys, Adidas, the Star Casino, McDonald’s and Hyundai
So the bigwigs at NRL headquarters want to wring every last drop of juice out of the grape every year.
With every passing series, the hype goes up and the commercial opportunities grow -and now Origin could be about to turn a dangerous new corner.
The vast bulk of the NRL’s money comes from TV rights deals. Footy supremo Peter V’landys has been upfront about the possibility the league will follow the big overseas sports by dividing up their product and putting more and more of it behind paywalls.
‘We have to look at all formats and that’s one of them,’ V’landys told Yahoo this week as he spoke about the chances of splitting off parts of the game to streaming giants like DAZN or Netflix.
‘The jewel in the crown is State of Origin and there’s other channels [interested].
‘Ideally, we’d like it all in one package, but it you look at the NFL and how they do it – and they’re very successful – we’ll analyse and watch it.
‘Whatever maximises our return.’
What a delightful vision of Origin’s future that is.
More and more of the world’s best players unable to take the field. More bloody commercials. More sponsors until the jerseys look like billboards. More controversy-free hot air from players and coaches. More overdone bulldust from commentators trying to hype up the blood and thunder of Origin like it’s still 1988.
And then, to top it all off, you have to pay extra to watch it.
PVL is right, Queensland vs NSW is still the jewel in the crown. But the NRL is taking the crown to Cash Converters.
