Origin, valued at $100 million a year in TV rights, devours everything in its path. It pulls in people who don't know who Sosaia Feki, Tuimoalo Lolohea and Kyle Lovett are – and have no desire to find out. It's a monster. All encompassing: State of Origin will dominate the news cycle. Credit:Getty Images Just as Coca-Cola was first invented for morphine addiction, Origin was invented to help out the Queensland Rugby League when interstate football was considered such a mismatch it was being played on Tuesday night at Leichhardt Oval. Those who don't remember either problem – morphine addiction of residential state football – have been gorging on Coke and Origin ever since. Meanwhile, the club competition struggles for air for two months, the table is distorted by teams playing without their stars and an ever-increasing number of NRL players are left out because they don't come from either state.

Representative football has comprehensively failed to keep pace with the changing demographics of the NRL's playing population and the nationalisation of the premiership. Turning blue: The Big Banana is seen covered in a giant NSW Blues jersey to welcome the team to its training base in Coffs Harbour. Credit:Matt King For a parable, look at City-Country. A number of players in Origin's history have come straight from bush football – Paul Field, Rex Wright, Rohan Hancock, Phil Duke. That's unthinkable now but Origin itself looks pretty much the same. Remember how weird it was in the late 1980s to have Terry Matterson and Chris Johns live in Brisbane but play for NSW, when for years the traffic was exclusively in the other direction? Now the top two teams in the premiership are in Queensland. NSW would happily take the core of both clubs if it could.

Origin was invented as a counter to economic migration of Queensland players who pursued poker machine money in Sydney. That economic migration ceased long ago, when poker machine money stopped being the sport's primary source of income. Yet Origin still looks the same. Origin still has cultural relevance now but it probably resides solely in the remaining vestiges of a Texas-like chip on Queensland's shoulder, a resentment about the way Australian identity continues to be dictated by the southern states where government, business and media are headquartered. But even that is disappearing. Not as quickly as bushies stopped despising the city slickers (thus condemning City-Country) because the differences between them disappeared, but it's happening nonetheless. Here's the thing, though. If Origin ceases to be the best of the best, if we acknowledge the job it was supposed to do for rugby league was done decades ago, if the world view of those in each state is now more or less identical, it will nevertheless remain a cultural and financial powerhouse.

Like the Melbourne Cup, you know when you're at a State of Origin game that the whole nation is focused on that green rectangle. Live sport has grown in value as everything else in the media became easily pirated. The rise of social media only intensifies the reverence the occasion is afforded. The question is how to stop it cannibalising both club and international football. The second of these questions is partially resolved by making anyone who did not live in NSW or Queensland before the age of 13 ineligible for Origin. Another step, which seems imminent, is allowing Origin players to represent tier two nations for which they properly qualify. Surely the way to stop Origin pillaging club football is to take a hit on the next TV deal and completely pause the NRL when it is on. Three consecutive weekends, with every other nation given the opportunity to play entire Test series' during the window, would finally bring the series into synch with the rest of the sport