State of Origin wrap up

As my closest friends know, I've never been the most rabid or parochial sports fan. I watch and will my Dragons as they go 'round every week, and they do have the ability to shift my heart rate up a notch in the second halves of matches.

But, to be honest, I echo my mum's apt sentiments when Gen asked her last week if she follows the football: "I like it, Gen, but I prefer a good movie". Right on, Mum. I could count on one or less hands the times I stayed up past midnight to watch international sporting fixtures as a kid, but I pummelled (often with mum sitting next to me) the late night ABC screenings of '30s and '40s Hitchcock movies.

Still, State of Origin is supposed to be the premier rugby league fixture of the year, where the best of the best go head-to-head, toe-to-toe, pec-to-pec.
My problems with Origin: 1. There's nothing at stake; 2. Your best club players needlessly risk injury and your premiership hopes at once; and 3. I feel like I'm watching union due to '1'.
With some notable exceptions, like Barcelona FC, professional sport is more brand and less community. State of Origin highlights this for me. Do I care about interstate rivalries? No. Am I given time to begin caring (say, through the emotional rollercoaster of a season)? No.
If you think I'm being too cynical about one of australia's great sporting fixtures and that I'm a fag for not loving every sporting event on the box (ps, I also don't care for cars), then answer me this: Name three historic Origin moments and the year and game in which they occurred.

Can't? What a surprise.

In the end, all I'm saying is, to spectate and be entertained, you need good character development, a narrative arc that builds to climactic moments and - if you're lucky - a communal emotional experience.
Movies give you two of these three regularly, professional sport is capable of three, but consistently delivers one or less.

That was your maths lesson for today.

Mark