What is Magic Round good for?
The idea of a festival of footy is great for some.
Fans love it, at least the locals keen to go to the games in Brisbane or those who have enough money to fly into town to do so.
The Queensland government? For sure.
Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has said it's evidence of "Queensland's ability to host world-class sporting events", but it's hard to imagine the International Olympic Committee looked too deeply at the event when making the tough choice between Brisbane and no other bidders for the 2032 Olympic hosting rights.
She said it was the biggest thing to happen to rugby league in Queensland since the Maroons won eight straight State of Origin series — a quick reminder that the 2015 Broncos-Cowboys grand final fell in the window since then.
The Queensland Premier has also made no secret of her joy in seeing hotel rooms booked out across the city.
It's a money-spinning tourism boon, and no-one's pretending it's not.
Local casinos and bars are happy to jump on board with "Magic Weekend" offers and the like, which goes some way to explaining why the state government was so keen to keep the event in Brisbane; even going so far as to claim it invented the idea that has been a regular fixture of the Super League season in Europe for a decade.
The activities out the front of the stadium — "brought to you by the beer from up here" — and the various corners of the ground — from Chemist Warehouse, Bundy rum, Ampol — betray the cynical marketing nature of the whole venture, beloved by the state stakeholders and the league itself.
So too the many players who for years have said Lang Park is their favourite ground must relish getting an extra chance to run around in the impressively steep cauldron.
Victorious Cowboys captain Chad Townsend said after the final game of the round how much he loved the concept and said the buzz around the city was palpable — a sentiment echoed by other players over the weekend.
But it's perhaps enjoyed less by the Brisbanites whose weekends were waylaid by about two dozen hours of major road closures over those three days.
And the tired stadium workers heard lamenting three long days of service to well-lubricated patrons.
Of course, along with that amount of alcohol came fan violence on the first night, largely cheered on by those in the north-eastern quarter of the stadium, most of whom hopefully couldn't see just how serious it was.
The NRL did not feel the need to release a statement condemning the well-publicised behaviour of its fans — a silence that Football Australia or even the AFL would likely not get away with — although NRL chief executive Andrew Abdo did provide comment to News Corp, saying the fans would be banned for life.
That's the sort of thing it might be good to broadcast more widely, even if it takes some of the sheen of the "Magic".
There was at least one pitch invader and while flashing the kiss cam onto two men shouldn't be an issue, perhaps given the derisive laughter it repeatedly elicited from the crowd, those in charge of stadium operations could stop encouraging it.
In fact, given how many people, including a few kids, were broadcast on the big screen pretending to give oral sex — footage that was then aggregated across fan pages on social media — maybe it's time to put the fan cam down for a spell altogether.
On the field, the football itself was pretty standard fare, because no amount of use of the word "magic" in promotional material can transform a bad team into a good team.
We certainly saw that with the interesting choice to open the extravaganza with a cellar-swelling showdown between Newcastle and Canterbury.
After that, Brisbane continued their resurgence, the Warriors fought back from a seemingly impossible deficit but ultimately fell short, and the Panthers remained dominant. Pretty typical stuff.
While three successive days with crowds of 40,000-plus probably couldn't be achieved any other way for the NRL, the long days of Magic Round meant the stadium was never entirely full.
The Broncos-Manly match on Friday night, Storm-Panthers match on Saturday Night, and Rooster-Eels match on Sunday evening probably had the biggest crowds of the weekend, with 130,122 fans making it through the gates at various times over the three days.
"Magic Round" is the ultimate in marketing terms that say a little while meaning less. The NRL trotted out another this year with its "Unreal" campaign for the season, although it hasn't caught on the same way "Magic" has.
Perhaps it's because it's a fun word to say (hell, it's on this page at least 10 times), or maybe it's just easy to take the mickey out of.
Either way, with governments, sponsors and players well and truly on board, it's not going anywhere.
But that doesn't mean it can't get better. Here's hoping 2023 showcases more of the best on the park and less of the worst of it.
