This is it. If New South Wales don’t beat Queensland on Wednesday evening at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium it will be time for the team, coach, NSWRL, and entire state of 7.544 million people to admit that it cannot be done. That they cannot beat Queensland.
Not these Queenslanders, anyway. Not these skilful hard-boned super-bots who’ve sported half a dozen of the greatest players there has ever been. These Queenslanders have just up and won and won, and beaten everything the Blue hordes have thrown at them. Ten series in 11 years – for a series that was once spookily close, it’s been nothing short of domination.
Yet in Brisbane for Wednesday night’s decider, Queensland won’t be able to call on Greg Inglis, Matt Scott, Darius Boyd and, of course, Johnathan Thurston, the shaman in centre-field who makes so much magic happen.
They will, of course, have captain Cameron Smith, who does the simple things with such perfect precision he’s like a German robot drilling car parts into a Lexus. They’ll also have Cooper Cronk, a running gun known for super-smarts at speed. And Billy Slater, known for being the greatest fullback rugby league has ever seen. And there’s 14 other players among the best in show.
And there will be the roiling, rocking super-ground, Suncorp Stadium, that on Origin night heaves like they’d filmed the climactic scenes from Big Trouble at Little China at the rum factory in Bundaberg.
But the Blues beat all that – flogged it – in Game I. They thundered over the Maroons. Giant marauders such as David Klemmer, Aaron Woods and man-of-the-match, Andrew Fifita, who had one of Origin’s greatest games, just kept on coming, hard, at speed, and bashed into Queensland like maniacal crash-test dummies. And it really hurt.
On the back of that the Maroons opened up, burst open, and the Blues nifty speed men – James Maloney, Josh Dugan, Jarryd Hayne and, particularly, fullback James Tedesco – rent them asunder. It was the Blues’ biggest domination of Maroon since 2000 when Ryan Girdler scored 32 points himself and NSW players celebrated tries with human hand grenades.
And then for 50 minutes of Game II the script went the same way. The Maroons were keeping Fifita relatively quiet with multiple gang-tackles. But the Blues’ domination centre-ruck was similar. And Tedesco, Hayne and company looked flash.
They were 30 minutes from a famous series win in Sydney when they somewhat inexplicably stopped playing rugby league. With the great prize in sight, a chance to stamp an end to a dynasty, the Blues didn’t take it. The Blues choked.
They choked because Queensland started to play. From that 50th minute the Maroons started running the ball, passing it, from deep in their own territory. (In rugby league “deep” is about 10 metres your side of halfway.) You can almost hear Thurston, Cronk and Smith talking about it with Maroons coach Kevin Walters at half-time, then making it happen. They went with Plan B for 10 minutes of the second dig. No good? Plan C. Run them around. Have a crack at them on the edges. And thus Queensland’s very fine backs and free-running forwards went around the Blues instead of through them.
And it worked. NSW froze in the headlights. And Thurston scotched a famous come-from-behind victory with a curling right-to-left conversion that … well, you knew he was going to kick it. You knew. You knew. It’s just what he does.
But he won’t be there on Wednesday night, at least not in anger. And as such NSW have a chance to kill a dynasty.
How do they do it? NSW’s forwards will do what they do. Their big rigs – Klemmer, Woods, Fifita, Tyson Frizell, Boyd Cordner, Josh Jackson, Jake Trbojevic – will run hard all match. Wade Graham will do tricky things wide of the ruck. The Blues have the edge in the forwards. They’ll play it there, hard. Simple, super-physical, jolting, frothing, a maelstrom in the middle where only the strong survive.
And if they “win” the ruck by getting quick play-the-ball, Nathan Peats will be be able to dish sympathetic, “soft” ball to the next giant marauder to repeat the rampage, the damage, the harm. And Queensland will open up. They’ll have no choice.
And on top of all that NSW will hope their much-maligned halfback Mitchell Pearce can drive his team around, and kick long and high, and pass well, and effect those building blocks of rugby league: completed sets, repeat sets. Pearce has to work out where Queensland are weak and exploit it.
But there’s the rub. Ricky Stuart said it years ago, that halfbacks tend to “own” results, like quarterbacks in American football. And in that regard Pearce has owned very little. Indeed he’s been owned, been sledged, been ridiculed. And in Game II, with the game and series to be won, with Daley as coach, Peter Sterling in the camp, Andrew Johns in the commentary box, Pearce’s eyes were as big as anyone. Thurston’s arm was hanging off – yet Pearce threw the ball and runner elsewhere.
No, it’s not all Pearce’s fault. Queensland were Queensland – magnificent. And Pearce had a few mates, and NSW lacked leadership when it was needed. From captain Boyd Cordner, from coach Daley, from experienced chatterbox Jimmy Maloney. The buck stops with a few guys. But 50 cents is in the halfback’s pocket. Pearce’s time is now. Or it’s never.
