For a variety of reasons the concept of friendlies to the majority of Australian sports folk is a foreign one. Be it the dearth of international football played, or some chippy competitive spirit borne out of convict anthropology, Australia doesn’t really play friendly matches. And in rugby league they don’t exist at all.
Because you can’t play rugby league thus. Tackles are called hits or shots. The game demands commitment, confrontation and cartoon hate. In 2001 they held an old boys’ game of legends from NSW and Queensland, and Mark McGaw went all red mist on Mal Meninga, and the pair traded blows. Their combined age was 78. And that was a friendly, but the mien of old league dogs dies hard.
As it was on that funny, feisty evening at Leichhardt Oval, so will it be at the Coliseum of Queensland, Suncorp Stadium, for the dead rubber that is the third Origin of 2018. Dead? Forget it. These teams don’t play meaningless fixtures. NSW has won the series but both sides will be ravenous to win. It’s Origin. And that’s just it.
Come Wednesday evening at 7:45pm, the ground and the crowd therein will be a factor. At Suncorp fans are on the players – it’s a steep-walled and purpose-built rectangular theatre. As it was at Lang Park, the atmosphere is thick and un-friendly for the visitors from NSW.
Yet these victorious Blues know Suncorp. They’ve played Brisbane Broncos often enough in front of 30,000-plus. For sure, Suncorp on Origin night is a bubbling brew, and parochially so. Billy Moore will stand in the middle of the field before kick-off and bellow his patented “Queenslander” call to each of the four sides of the ground, and Queenslanders will bellow back.
How will they play it? The Maroons made plenty of hay on the outskirts last start with their retiring champion Billy Slater running hard, convincing angles and feeding his teammates. For all the talk of the Blues’ speedsters, the Maroons outsiders Dane Gagai, Valentine Holmes and Corey Oates are capable of hot-footed action and flying corner-flag slam-downs.
Elsewhere Cameron Munster is a super player and Daly Cherry-Evans is a Queenslander again. If the latter rips off a few try-making plays, he may be able to win over a crowd that hasn’t always been drawn to him after he played Gold Coast Titans off a break to enrich himself.
In this one, the Maroons need to hold the middle if they are to triumph. The darting Damien Cook looms as Queensland’s most wanted. Tearing up the middle and feeding James Maloney and James Tedesco – it’s the stuff of nightmares. The 27-year-old Cook is prime.
The battle between the big middle men will, as ever, decide how much ragged meat Cook can rent asunder. The Maroons have a live one in Jai Arrow and a Bond henchman in Josh Papalii. Yet they appear to lack at least one really big one to combat the Blues’ powerhouse props David Klemmer and Paul Vaughan, tearaway berserkers cut from the same side of beef.
After 20 minutes Tariq Sims will tear off the bench on debut to join his Dragons teammates Jack de Belin and Tyson Frizell. And the more you read the other names in the Blues’ forward roster – Boyd Cordner, Jake Trbojevic, Angus Chrichton – the more you like them. On paper, anyway, they are the tastier burger.
Of course the game will be played on Suncorp’s 136m x 82m Strathayr turf surface. And the Maroons will be doing their best for Billy Slater in his last Origin game. They’ll be doing it for coach Kevin Walters, and themselves. And their people, including the 50,000 or so in the stands.
But there is still a lot to like about the Blues, as there has been all series. Their halves, particularly, are the real deal: Maloney, 32, the senior man with no baggage; Nathan Cleary, 20, the gun mover. Both are generals, both are high-skilled, and they’ll just keep coming, feeding and playing.
It’s the way of their coach, Brad Fittler. He played thus and it’s how he conducts himself today. There are shades the Svengali about him – he talks like he’s on holiday. “We’ve set it up so we’ve stayed in some beautiful places,” he told media in Brisbane. “We’ve been out this morning walking, making the most out of life. It’s been pretty wonderful. I get to go back and cook my own breakfast now. It’s all pretty sad.”
And then his eyes twinkled and he stifled a laugh as if he’d shared an in-gag with friends. The man has a fine sense of ridiculous. Even Queenslanders couldn’t hate him. Or could they? Origin does strange things to people – as Mark McGaw could tell you.
