The banners in the southern Brisbane suburb of Melbourne promoting dislocated State of Origin I proclaim: "Nothing hits like Origin at the MCG".

This none-too-subtle allusion to Origin's violent past is a rather ham-fisted (pun intended) attempt to prey on the ignorance of those AFL-obsessed locals harbouring the dated notion that rugby league is a form of mixed martial arts.

Never mind that the Queensland and New South Wales teams who run out on Wednesday night will be mostly young, fast, skilful and contain very few of the old-style "hard men" who performed more face work than Joan Rivers' plastic surgeon.

You wonder what that old brawler Paul "The Chief" Harragon would make of the Blues' new "enforcer" Reagan Campbell-Gillard, who told Fairfax Media: "I'm a lover not a fighter. I can't even punch a punching bag. I'd rather scratch than throw a punch. I like to play aggressive football, but I don't like the fisticuffs. It looks bad and there are kids watching. That's the thing I don't like. We're role models for young kids.''

Whether you consider Campbell-Gillard refreshingly mature or a millennial marshmallow, the MCG won't be any place for those who tremble at the thought of an impending dental appointment.

The sheer size and speed of the modern player means the collisions will startle Melbourne day-trippers, even if knuckles are checked in at the dressing room door.

Add the intensity at which Origin is played due to the heightened sense of occasion and unless you grew up playing British Bulldog with real bulldogs, you cannot help but be in awe of the courage the game demands.

But while Origin remains an intimidating physical challenge, there is a nagging sense the concept has reached a crossroads as time and changed attitudes diminish some of the fundamentals that made it such an enormous success.

There have been three roughly overlapping phases which defined State of Origin and entrenched its place in the national consciousness.

Cameron Smith and Johnathan Thurston's departures are symbolic of the passing of a great Maroons team. ( AAP: Dave Hunt )

There were the foundation years during which a format borrowed from Australian Rules thrived largely on the desperation of Queenslanders to avenge real and imagined indignities inflicted by their southern overlords.

Some Queenslanders now playing for NRL clubs beside occasional NSW rivals admit the sheer vengeful hatred that drove those early Maroons teams is difficult to fathom.

But as latter-day Queensland hero Billy Slater once told me: "If you forget how much we hated NSW, you'd have Trevor Gillmeister or another of the old boys in your ear telling you a story about the early Origin games or what they'd done to ruin Queensland rugby league and by the time you ran out, you wanted to kill them.''

From Queensland's lust for battle and the Blues' need to turn defence into attack came the next phase of Origin. Call them the Biffo Years.

The 2018 Origin series could give us a glimpse of what the new era holds for both NSW and Queensland. ( AAP: Dave Hunt )

Run the videotape — as the broadcasters still do — of those pitched battles in which the brilliance of Origin greats such as Wally Lewis or Laurie Daly was either overshadowed or elevated by the malevolent mayhem that accompanied their great deeds, depending on how you felt about public acts of violence.

And — let's be honest — at the time many of us felt pretty good about those wild brawls because:

1. The sheer bloody brutality of games played at a time when we were moving toward more enlightened policies was instinctively fascinating 2. We weren't the ones being punched in the head

Next came the long period of Queensland domination that spans the years from 2006 to 2017, when the Four Horsemen of the Maroon Apocalypse — Cameron Smith, Jonathan Thurston, Cooper Cronk and Billy Slater — rode tall in the saddle.

During this phase Origin was sustained in Queensland by the sheer and still unrequited bloodlust of the Queeeeeeesnlanders as much as the generational excellence of the team; and in NSW by the arrogant but increasingly forlorn notion that weight of numbers, southern sophistication and footballing intellect would prevail. One day!

State of Origin may have moved on somewhat from the days of the big biffo of yesteryear. ( AAP: Dan Peled )

During this period the propaganda wars fought by the tabloid press on either side of the Tweed became more heated, with the verbal haymakers replacing the punches once thrown on the field.

You might call it a phoney war — but the connivance of the participants in leaking information against each other lent the media frenzy some credibility.

Now, on Wednesday night, either Queensland will sustain its advantage in what most expect are the dying days of the Maroon dynasty. Or NSW will herald a new Origin era by using a back five so swift it might do as well at the national 100 metres trials as on the rugby league field.

But what will sustain Origin in a way that the original Australian Rules version could not be sustained as the AFL's Perth and Adelaide franchises provided a new vehicle for chippy interstate vengeance?

Perhaps it will be the sheer excellence of the game itself — something the NRL has somehow managed to conceal beneath layers of referee bashing and the other miserable agendas peddled by the game's media crisis merchants.

Smith, Cronk, and Thurston are gone and Slater is going. It feels like an Origin era has ended.

On Wednesday night we get the first taste of what lies ahead.