AS AN exercise in cynicism, the killing of state-of-origin football takes some beating. But this is the way things work in footy.

Someone thinks something, says it loudly enough, somebody else repeats it, they jabber on about it on talkback radio, and suddenly it's adopted as truth.

In this case, it was that players did not want to play state-of-origin football. In my experience of covering numerous games, it was not really true. But never mind that. Nobody wanted to hear it. Soon enough, the public was conditioned to believe that players were feigning injury so that they did not have to play; that coaches were instructing them not to play. Doubtless this happened, but it was a minority.

Ask Robert Harvey or Gavin Brown or Dale Weightman or Dermott Brereton or Paul Roos or the South Australians who lined up to "Kick a Vic" in the '80s if they wanted to play.

Memories flood back from a state game in Adelaide in 1988 when the supercharged South Australians rolled the men of the Big V at Football Park, and Roos, who had won the Whitten Medal, stood up at a function after the match and implored his teammates to come back next year to gain revenge.

Up the back of the room, the hairs were rising on the back of my neck.

Of course, this is in the distant past, when state-of-origin Australian football briefly mimicked the success of rugby league's Queensland-NSW tete-a-tete. The ingredients were all there. The South Australians beat Victoria a couple of times, and were insufferable about it. The players were fair dinkum and the games invariably close.

I always loved state-of-origin football because it boasted the elite. There were no hacks out there turning the ball over. At its best, state footy was fabulous.

But it didn't last, partly because the success of the non-Victorian clubs in a burgeoning national competition usurped those feelings, and partly because the AFL and the public eventually lost faith in the product.

The AFL should have fought harder to save it, introduced some rules to protect the game's integrity, such as demanding that a player who missed with injury stood out the following weekend as well.

It could have been done but nobody cared enough.

Which is why I hope Saturday night is a raging success. I wish that it was the South Australians who were taking on the Victorians.

Nevertheless, I'm hoping for a last-kick finish and some individual brilliance.

I say give it a chance.