Because it's a given that so many people live and die by State of Origin, we very rarely ask what it is that people love so much about it.
When we switch on the TV for those three Wednesdays a year, or when we drop a month's worth of pay on a ticket, what do we want to see? What are we looking for?
Queensland's 22-12 victory is already being hailed as one of the great Origins of our time, but what does that mean? What makes a great game of State of Origin football?
It's not just the quality of the football itself. That always helps, but you can see quality football just about every week in the NRL.
When Origin is at its best, and it always seems to be at its absolute best in front of 52,000 Queensland screamers at Lang Park, it isn't just faster and the stakes aren't just higher.
It's got a different kind of edge to it, a physicality and ruthlessness that could not be replicated week to week in the NRL because it seems unlikely the human body could handle it.
It feels a little bit dangerous, with just a hint of illicit thrill, and it reminds you that it takes special people to play this game at this level.
When a game is played that way, it shouldn't be surprising when things occasionally cross the line, as they did when Matt Burton and Dane Gagai let their hands fly just after half-time.
Fighting is not a part of Origin anymore, even though it used to be part of the reason plenty of people tuned it — for proof of that, see how many people's eyes mist over, fondly, when you bring up the famous brawls from 1984, or 1991, or 1995, or 2009. We might remember those days fondly, but they aren't coming back.
In modern rugby league, fighting doesn't really exist, but it doesn't need to for a game to be special. The teams don't need to hate and despise each other and froth at the mouth about the unholy things they're going to do once the game begins for that game to be great.
Too often, rugby league does not trust the game itself to be enough, as the NRL has shown with its constant willingness to tweak the rules in order to solve problems that don't exist.
But watch that 80 minutes again, from the brutal opening exchanges to Ben Hunt's run to paradise, and you are taken to a place that's like nothing else.
This is the fiery crucible in which the true Origin heroes are forged, where the blood runs hot and every moment is on the edge of a knife and, if a player does have limits, he cannot afford to know them, even if a team is down two players, as Queensland were for 75-odd minutes.
For some, these sort of games can be the great redeemer in which a new future is hammered into reality, as Kalyn Ponga will find in the days and weeks and years to come.
Ponga cops a lot of stick for his salary at the Knights, and for not living up to it every week. Sometimes it's warranted, and sometimes it's not.
However, on this night — when the best of the best all played their best — it was Ponga who was the best of them. He was the one who found something after half-time and injected himself into the attack, again and again, and tortured the Blues with his footwork and speed.
He led the charge to flip the momentum of the match as the Maroons fought their way back, inch by agonising inch, until they had clawed their way into the line. That's something that doesn't go away and it's something people don't forget.
There were so many other heroes — like Harry Grant, who has now been one of the biggest difference-makers in two Queensland deciders — and Daly Cherry-Evans, who ran his team round the park with an ease he has never before shown at this level, and Tom Dearden, who played with a veteran's touch in a debut that will live in the memory for as long as Origin is played.
Special mention must go to Ben Hunt, the irrepressible, relentless Ben Hunt, who played lock and hooker and everywhere else and could outlast a drover's dog if that's what he needed to do for his team. If you kill him, you better bury him deep cause he'll never stop coming back.
After playing a full game, and doing it in two positions he doesn't play every week, Hunt's try in the final moments was an exclamation point, his celebration afterwards was a rapturous scream to a Maroon heaven.
Finding the will to go all the way after everything Hunt had done on a brutal night of football? That's grace under pressure. That's standing up to the heat. That's the absolute best of Hunt as a player, and of this whole lunatic thing we call State of Origin.
The Blues had plenty of heroes of their own — James Tedesco could not have done more in a brilliant captain's knock, Jacob Saifiti and Junior Paulo were mighty in the middle of the field and Api Koroisau was brilliant while he was on the field.
However, the heat that forges greatness goes both ways, and it can be too much for some. Stephen Crichton had a tough night, as did Siosifa Talakai. Brad Fittler's bench rotations will come under scrutiny, again, as they always do when New South Wales lose.
The Blues began this series with the chance to secure their fourth series win in five years, and level the teams of the early 1990s and 2000s and stake their claim as one of the state's finest ever Origin teams.
However, they — once again — were left to swallow a bitter defeat and wonder: how the hell this keeps happening, how on earth do they keep getting ambushed by these goddamn Queenslanders, how do they harness this Lang Park magic they never shut up about, and find a way to pull the same trick over and over and over again?
