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State of Origin? How about that game? What a game. What a flogging. What a really fast, frenetic and super flogging. A super-flogging. The best kind.
A flogging? What else could you call it? NSW looked bigger, faster and more energetic. They looked younger, which they are by an average two years.
Their big forwards – Andrew Fifita, of course, the standout, and we’ll talk more of him – made big, hard, painful metres up the middle.
At half-time Johnathan Thurston was interviewed by Paul Vautin and looked shell-shocked at the damage the big Blues-men were doing in the middle.
But both packs of forwards, the first half anyway, tore into each other in the middle. It was pick-handles at speed. It was great.
On the back of it Jimmy Maloney was very good, Mitchell Pearce was quite good – though his short kicking game was below par and would’ve earned him huge ire had the Blues lost.
And Jimmy Tedesco was the second-best afield. You could make a good argument he was MOTM. And we will talk more of him also.
How about that game? The first half, particularly. The first half was as fast and frenetic as rugby league can be played.
And it was ‘perfect’ – all those completed sets. Both teams, 100 per cent. Ridiculous. A super fast game, high skill, played for sheep stations.
It was tiring to watch. It was magnificent.
After the first 20 minutes you got the feeling someone had to crack – because the human body can only handle so much. They continued to bang heads for the rest of the half. It was still anyone’s game.
And then Queensland cracked. Pearce ran off hot work by Tedesco, on the back of barnstorming work by the big men that gifted them space going forward.
Tedesco didn’t need to be asked twice. Man with those feet, that pace, that enjoyment for the greatest game of all rugby league … he smoked in and fed Pearce who ran under the posts.
And that was the game. We didn’t know it then. But the Blues went into the sheds leading 12-4, bashed up and bristling, and on fi-yah.
The Maroons went in bashed up and thinking, we are in big trouble.
Some shout-outs:
Laurie Daley used his bench very well, rotating his big rigs in and out seamlessly.
Queensland’s forwards had to do a power of tackling. But it wasn’t regular tackling, with a bit of a dance up top and a wrestle. This was a series of monster trucks running at them flat tilt. It was blood and bone, and bad news bears.
Gee it was good.
Boyd Cordner, Jake Trbojevic, Josh Jackson, and the giant Kergan from Highlander, the mad bald bastard David Klemmer (192m), well.
Huge people coming at speed with laser beam intent, all game. Something had to give. And it was Queensland.
The referees? I couldn’t tell you who partnered Matt Cecchin, a good thing. Couldn’t argue with the few penalties both gave (6). They kept a good ten metres that was filled by berserkers. They let a few unsavoury things go. Gus Gould might call them Origin referees.
Nathan Peats? So assured on debut. Sometimes you can see a man’s eyes, and see fear or nerves or blokes unsure of themselves – which in Origin is understandable and writ large. But Peats looked like he belonged.
Fine, slick service for his big men, who ran onto the ball with confidence. Fine service for the halves who had good ball going forward. Give good halves that and they’ll carve you up. As Queensland have for many years. And he made 53 tackles with a bung leg. He’ll be back.
Jarryd Hayne scored a cracking try. Brett Morris was dangerous on the same flank.
The Blues didn’t have a bad player. Tyson Frizell, maybe, was quiet. But you’d be a hard marker. He was a six out of ten at worst.
But the rest of the Blues forwards were solid 7s to 9s – Cordner, Klemmer, Trbojevic, Jackson – trucking it up hard and fast into the meat of the Maroons line, and repeat. And then there was Fifita.
(AAP Image/Joe Castro)
How about him? Enormous. Probably the best game he’s ever played. They couldn’t stop him. He made 11 tackle breaks. For reference, a whippet like Tedesco made a game-high 12. It was a Beetson-esque performance.
I’ve been interviewing him this week and he sounds like at the ripe old age of 28, which he is this month, he’s become… I dunno. At peace? Something. But it seems like the immaturity’s out of him, he’s got a third child due mid-July – right around Origin III – and he’s just settled. He seems at peace.
Sure, the ‘FKL’ thing on the wrist-band is pretty fresh. And he’s something of a hot-head, there’s a brain explosion in the man, at least on the field.
But his chagrin over his wrist-band error is genuine, as his loyalty to his mate in prison.
He’s a complex man.
But, well… he keeps out of the wrong side of the papers, and dominates Origin a game or two more as he did here, we may even learn to like the great giggling big bear.
Shout out also to Jimmy Tedesco. Two hundred metres, 12 tackle breaks. Super defence, try-savers. Always danger. Fullbacks can run like five-eighths today, hovering around the ruck with their hot little feet. And Jimmy T prospered on the back of the big forwards punching holes in the Maroons and running them ragged.
Queensland? The Maroons, also, didn’t have a poor player. So good were the Blues a great tackler like Matt Gillett missed seven tackles, six in the first half. Justin O’Neill dropped one for Fifita’s try. But that happens.
So what went wrong?
Sure there’ll be some soul-searching but you’d have to nominate the decision by Kevin Walters and his fellow Maroons selectors who didn’t pick The Goat – Billy Slater.
A fable: some years ago famous Randwick Rugby Club head man Jeff Sayle was in a selection meeting and such were Randwick stocks at the time that they dropped David Campese.
And Jeff Sayle didn’t agree with that and went public to declare that he didn’t want it his legacy that he was part of the cabal who dropped Campo. He didn’t want that on his headstone.
Walters, Darren Lockyer and Gene Miles might well be thinking – what have we done? What did we do that for?
What did they do that for? Loyalty. The ‘right’ reasons – Darius Boyd had been brilliant, the wingers too, last year. Could you drop them? Seems you could not.
But hell – BILLY SLATER?!
He’ll play in Game 2, surely. Or Kevin, Locky and Geno can expect to have their Queensland passport revoked. They have them in Queensland. They do.
No they don’t. But the Goat plays Game 2, surely.
Game II? Without Matt Scott, Greg Inglis, possibly Thurston? You’d still have to say, yeah, nah.
Queensland will sweat buckets on Thurston’s shoulder. And obviously they’ll be a better team with the champion in the six.
(AAP Image/Dan Peled)
It’s not as pronounced as it is at the Cowboys where if he doesn’t play it effects entire betting markets and the Cowboys go from odds-on favourites to friendless hacks. But Queensland are a 12-18 point better team with him in there.
But they were just smashed by 24 points. And if their forwards don’t give Thurston space and ball going forward, and there’s a succession of giant thunderers running at him and using him up, y’know – he’s a great player, they say one of the best ever.
But he is but one man.
Queensland’s forwards were verily emasculated. They’ll come back harder. But if the Blues play anything like that again, they’re done. As Timmy Gore said: The Kings are dead. Long live the Kings.
Interesting to see how ‘loyal’ Queensland are now.