They are the twenty-six minutes of madness and incompetence that threaten to haunt NSW coach Craig Bellamy for the remainder of his life.

As he wrestles with the decision of whether to put his hand up for a third crack at beating Queensland next season, Bellamy revealed the frustrations he would carry into Wednesday night’s final game of the 2009 Origin campaign.

Taking on a Queensland side being lauded as one of, if not the greatest, ever to pull on Maroon jumpers, Bellamy can’t help but think what might have been as he relives the opening bursts which have cruelled the Blues during the first two games of the series.

Take out the eight-minute nightmare from game one and 18-minute encore performance in Sydney – when on each occasion the Blues gave up 18-0 leads – and NSW have outscored Queensland 32-16.

But Bellamy knows all that matters for little in the end, with the Maroons having created history with their fourth straight series win.

“It’s frustrating to have those periods … I don’t think we’ve been that far away except for them periods where we haven’t just been ordinary, we’ve been well below ordinary,” he said.

“There’s just been a couple of periods in the game where we’ve gone right off the rails basically – that ten minute period in Melbourne, that was a pretty young side down there and they perhaps got downhearted when Jarryd (Hayne) got that try disallowed but in Sydney, to start like that, and have a 10-15 minute period like that, that’s just not on.

“I was hoping we’d learn a little bit from (game one) but we didn’t in the second.

“I hate to say it, but the second one there was a lot more softness about our defence … we made errors but especially at this level, you’ve got to back errors up with strong defence and we didn’t do that and that was the real disappointing part for me.

“We’ve got to be a bit more consistent in those tough times.”

Whether the result of Wednesday night’s match will have any bearing on Bellamy’s desire to return next year is unclear, with the Melbourne Storm mentor giving little away on match eve.

He believes he has handled coaching against his Storm stars Cameron Smith, Greg Inglis and Billy Slater a bit better, but it is obvious the situation still irks him somewhat.

After all, Bellamy spends 49 weeks of the year trying to develop them into not just better players, but better people. He is then faced with having three weeks to expose and exploit their every weakness under the glaring spotlight of Origin football.

“I probably shouldn’t be saying it, but at the end of the day it’s good to see them getting rewarded for their hard work – I’d just rather see them getting rewarded at club footy and playing for Australia and not so much Origin,” Bellamy said.

“(Coaching against them) is not something that you particularly enjoy.”

And is this the last time he’ll do it?

“It could be, it might not be, who knows?”

“That’s not all my decision either – the NSWRL might not want me.

© AAP 2012

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