STEVE Mascord is a renowned rugby league journalist who may be the game’s greatest fanatic ... and he can’t really cop State of Origin, calling it “an unedifying, crass sell-out”.

Touchstones: Rugby League, Rock’n’Roll, the Road and Me, is Mascord’s new book. The following is an excerpt, reproduced with permission from the publisher, Stoke Hill Press. The book is available for purchase here.

CHAPTER 9: STATE OF ORIGIN

Perhaps there are always clues that one will eventually encounter a crisis of identity. One such clue can be found in people who, even as they associate themselves with something mainstream, with ‘the crowd’, disavow themselves of the most mainstream aspect of that thing. They’re the most ‘out’ part of the ‘in-crowd’.

Upcoming Matches

That’s what it’s like for me and State of Origin.

During the autumn internationals in the UK and France in 2012, I happened to amble past York racecourse. There, on a shoulder of the road, was a sign that explained why the site was chosen. Highwayman Dick Turpin was hanged there in 1739 and it was determined that if the racecourse was sufficiently close to the scaffold, the crowds already attracted by the latter would stay on for the former.

It was sport’s inaugural double-header: one in the basket in the morning, followed by the first past the post in the afternoon.

LIVE stream the 2017 NRL Telstra Premiership on FOX SPORTS. Get your free 2-week Foxtel Now trial and start watching in minutes. SIGN UP NOW >

Steve Mascord's new book, Touchstones. Source: Supplied

The sign set in motion the squeaky wheels and gears of my melon: slowly, we are becoming more genteel in what we watch for entertainment. When it comes to what we digest for amusement, we are growing more capable of enjoying pursuits in which no one is actually quartered, drawn or hung. (Or perhaps we are just becoming more fearful of litigation).

Each time a sport undergoes a change to make it more civilised, someone has a whinge. In rugby league, we allowed injured players to be replaced: “Pussies!” We increased the number of replacements from two to four: “Wusses!” We forced bleeding players to leave the field: “Pansies!” Head Injury Assessment? I can’t remember exactly what I thought about that …

In 2012 and 2013, we saw the death of the shoulder charge and then — in State of Origin and the NRL — of punching. One of the most common catch-cries of the bloodthirsty during this process was: “They’ll ban tackling eventually!”

Correct. They will.

Live stream the 2017 NRL Telstra Premiership on FOX SPORTS. Get your free 2-week FOXTEL NOW trial and start watching in minutes. SIGN UP NOW!

The aftermath of 2015’s monster (illegal) Kane Evans vs Sam Kasiano shoulder charge. Source: News Corp Australia

In another 200 years, I’m willing to wager that body-contact sport will have all but died out. We’ll look back on participants breaking bones and getting knocked out to the cheers of thousands with the same disgust we now reserve for ancient Romans who fed slaves to lions.

Yes, it is the death of rugby league — a very slow death that started long ago with the introduction of replacements. It’s evolution, baby. Alex McKinnon’s injury and the spate of suicides — the late Chad Robinson, a former NRL player, reportedly expressed concerns about the long-term impact of head knocks — will hasten us down this road.

So make the most of the next couple of centuries, OK? One day, there’ll be a plaque (holographic, I’m tipping) at Homebush Bay that reads: “On this spot, during the first game of the 2013 Origin series, NSW’s Paul Gallen punched Queensland’s Nate Myles in the head repeatedly and was not sent off.”

I agree with the process that will eventually make rugby league obsolete, strangely enough. I don’t want it to disappear tomorrow, mind. But making the sport more acceptable to parents is sensible and, long after I’m dead, that acceptability will equal obsolescence. I’m comfortable with that. I won’t be around and left with nothing to do on weekends.

Paul Gallen punches Nate Myles in Origin I, 2013. Source: Getty Images

The counter argument, which I have heard from more than one colleague is: what if we do all these things to win over parents and they don’t come back anyway? But that’s not the point, see? Blokes who are not wearing boxing gloves standing in the middle of a packed stadium punching the bejesus out of each other while drunken bloodthirsty hoons cheer is uncivilised. It’s sub-human. If we saw it on the streets, we would be horrified.

The new Parramatta chief executive, Bernie Gurr, once took me to task for predicting on social media the death of body-contact sport. ‘What good are you doing?’ he demanded. It was an excellent question: why tell members of a rugby league audience that their favourite sport is on death row, albeit a row longer than Wagga Wagga’s main drag?

The reason is to put things in perspective. I didn’t play rugby league to any decent level (unless you rate Windang under10s and the Illawarra High School knockout as a decent level). My role therefore must be to put things in context, explain the significance of events. Growing up with rugby league obsessive compulsive disorder helps in that regard, but so does the ability to step back from my own obsessions and comment on the subject at hand dispassionately.

Origin: Not Steve Mascord’s favourite brand of league. Source: News Corp Australia

Which brings me to State of Origin. I don’t particularly like it.

If Super League is more endearing than the NRL because it’s more friendly and accessible and French rugby league is more endearing than Super League for the same reason, all the way down to Jamaican under-16s, then State of Origin is positively unfriendly and inaccessible.

When all of rugby league looks up to the NRL, it’s humiliating to see the NRL bend over and touch its toes in the prison shower of sports for seven weeks every year around Origin time. For a rugby league trainspotter, it feels vaguely like — here’s that word again — betrayal.

I realise it’s hard for a rank-and-file rugby league fan, much less a rank-and-file sports fan, to understand this perspective. If you’re the latter, Origin is probably the only time you even watch rugby league. The best way I can explain it is this: you have a local band you follow around to pubs all over town. One day they release a record of cloying, catchy pop songs, sell millions and play the stadiums of the world. You don’t like those songs and you don’t like the band any more. That’s how I feel at Origin time.

Origin: A cultural phenomenon for the masses. Source: Getty Images

State of Origin is a cultural phenomenon. It’s a television leviathan. It’s the NRL’s cash cow. It’s also an unedifying, crass sell-out by the sport of rugby league. I always understood that at some level. About a decade ago, I criticised the NRL for ambush marketing at Origin games. They’d charge hundreds of dollars for tickets, and then flog a Hollywood blockbuster on the big screen and have Toyotas doing laps of the stadium while the PA blared, ‘Oh what a feeling.’ A former senior NRL executive was mortally offended. “You can’t over-commercialise Origin,” he said the next time he saw me. “That’s what it is. It’s a commercial entity. That’s what it’s about.”

In mid-2016, as part of Fox Sports’ panel show, NRL 360 (on which I was an infrequent guest), it was put to Origin coaches Laurie Daley and Kevin Walters that the 22-minute half-time breaks — you read that right, 22 minutes — that allow TV to insert many advertisements, had the potential to change the course of matches. Daley and Walters cheerily agreed! “Alf [Langer] fell asleep, it was that long,” Kevvie chortled. “I ran out of things to say!” Loz chimed in. Did you hear that? Rugby league has so little regard for the very structures that surround the playing of matches, let alone its history and traditions, that we find commercial imperatives that impact on the actual game a simple fact of life. Integr-what?

Queensland's Kevin Walters and Cooper Cronk with NSW’s Laurie Daley and Aaron Woods. Source: News Corp Australia

Doesn’t this seem to you like nothing is sacred; that everything’s for sale? To underline the inequalities and expediency that Origin exposes every winter, let’s go back to the 2016 series. New South Wales called up the Canterbury utility Josh Morris hours before a Bulldogs away match in Canberra. This meant a 19-year-old named Reimus Smith, who had played a whole game the day before, was forced to make his way to the Australian capital and play again as Morris’s replacement.

Canterbury CEO Raelene Castle told me outside the Bulldogs sheds that day: “The etiquette in place at the moment is that we have to release our players for Kangaroos and Origin. But, in reality, when you’re running a professional competition, to expect us to do that on the morning of a game when we’re 300 kilometres away and our NSW Cup team played yesterday is not very reasonable. If we played [Saturday], they would still have called J Moz up [on Sunday]. The three teams which have lost the most players [to Origin] all lost this weekend. The Broncos, the Cowboys and the Bulldogs — five, five and three (players), four for us on the morning — have all lost. So you’ve got to question: is this another form of salary capping? The teams that don’t have many players involved in Origin end up with points they may not have otherwise got. Origin’s amazing. Commercially, it’s really beneficial. We all know that. But when you look at the actual integrity and credibility of the NRL competition over 26 weeks, you have to question whether this is the right outcome.”

Anthony Milford’s Samoa knock-back was a grim sign of Origin’s absolute power. Source: AAP

Here’s another contradiction: a club coach, Wayne Bennett, was able to say that a player (Anthony Milford) could not take part in a Test match for Samoa just a few weeks earlier, and he didn’t even have to give a fair reason. But when a state team wants a player, it gets the player immediately regardless of whether he is just about to put his boots on to turn out for his club.

The difference? Money.

That’s why I say State of Origin is a sell-out. Origin pays our bills and that is enough to justify to the rest of the sport almost any inconsistency, compromise or inconvenience. The clubs complain, but they are complicit. Everyone is still living hand to mouth, even though food became plentiful years ago. Our neighbourhood has been gentrified but we still think like street thugs.

We’ll keep playing Origin on Wednesday night (where it was originally stationed to avoid interfering with club football) because they’ll give us heaps of cash to keep it there. Des Hasler got it right that day in Canberra. Rugby league in Australia running two competitions at the same time, using some of the same players, is about as barmy as you can get. Three sheets to the wind.

Origin 2017: Undiluted greed. Source: Getty Images

The only sheet that matters to rugby league, though, is the balance sheet. Time to spell it out: the NRL not pausing while Origin is played is undiluted greed. Just like the old delayed Sunday telecasts, they won’t get away with it forever. Common sense and justice will find a way — the inclusion of one weekend Origin in the TV deal that will come into effect in 2018 is evidence of that.

Having said all this, I am not immune to the sheer magnetism of a contest that stops a nation three times a year. I’ve covered rugby league games while battling tear gas in the Papua New Guinea highlands, electrical blackouts in Lebanon and hangovers in Keighley. I even once received a text from Canberra Raiders fullback Clinton Schifcofske as he was lining up a conversion from the western touchline at Suncorp Stadium. But until 2013, watching Origin from the sideline was one journalistic odyssey that had eluded me. The honour was finally bestowed thanks to Triple M securing the rights and was made even more enjoyable by the fact that during the game, I didn’t have to say anything on air. No doubt, listeners were also grateful for this.

For Origins I and III in ’13, both played in Sydney, I sat next to former NSW centre Ryan Girdler and a tech a few short metres from the whitewash and just watched (and tweeted and instagrammed). For the second match in Brisbane, my partner-in-crime was the hulking Ben Hannant, and Maroons prop from 2008 to 2012, and I was behind him, which meant I didn’t see quite as much …

Paul Gallen punches Nate Myles, in a surprisingly rare (yes, rare) Origin stink. Source: Getty Images

I’ve got to admit, being so close to something that others hold in such reverence was energising and almost intoxicating. I could not fail to be transfixed as the teams ran out to such a cacophonous response and stood in front of me for the national anthem. Then the game began, and almost immediately I discovered something that I’d never sensed in the press box. I had always believed that Origin players knew, intellectually, that they had a licence to be more physical, more brutal, more violent, than in club matches. This behaviour was tacitly condoned by officials, who were raking in the cash from the public’s expectation of fireworks. But, sitting on the sideline, I realised that committing mayhem was not just an intellectual decision. It was primal. It emanated from the 82,000 souped-up spectators who came not just expecting stiff-arms and fisticuffs but demanding them.

I came away thinking that it was a miracle of restraint on the part of the 34 players that an Origin series is not just one big 240-minute rolling brawl.

Touchstones: Rugby League, Rock’n’Roll, the Road and Me, published by Stoke Hill Press, $29.95, available wherever good books are sold and at www.stevemascord.com