What's Queensland's excuse this time?

I moved to Brisbane from Sydney some ten years ago, and in the main find the place a very livable city. I have made several friends here (but must admit my closest mates are like me, ex-pat New South Welshman) and find most people warm and friendly.

However, boy are they pains in the you-know-what come Origin time, particularly over the past five years.

I had almost forgotten what it was like for NSW to win a series. One thing I do remember though was the constant wave of excuses that they would come up with when NSW won.

Now I’m not suggesting for one minute NSW are shoe-ins for the series this year but just in case the unthinkable does happen and they do win, I thought it only fair to help out my Queensland friends by compiling a list of excuses they may wish to use. Let’s face it, it’s been quite a while since they’ve lost a series so may have forgotten the previously well-used explanations.

I limited the list to ten because it would take forever to read every one that I heard.

So for all you Queenslanders, please feel free to use one, several or indeed all (and I’m sure there will be some that will) of the following come 9:30 pm on Wednesday July 6, 2011.

1. We were robbed. The ref(s) are cheats. (This is a classic, it just never gets old. It is a well know fact that the referee(s) were from NSW in every single game in which Queensland have lost throughout the history of State Of Origin.)

2. We just had too many injuries. (Queenslander like to use this even given the fact that the top four or five players in every position on the field are generally a Queenslander. Usually they could pick two teams that would, on paper at least, beat the best NSW could offer.)

3. The judiciary should have suspended (insert name of best NSW player here) for the high-shot, dangerous tackle, back chatting etc in the last club round. (This one’s usually used even though three or four Queensland payers were also guilty of similar offences playing the same weekend).

4. The NSW coach influenced the match officials with his comments in the Telegraph during the week. (Not to be confused with No. 1, this not only refers to the referees but the touchies, video ref, match revue committee and even the ball boys. Always tickles my fancy this one seeing as the Queensland coach has always had column in The Courier Mail and never misses an opportunity).

5. The final pass in NSW’s match-winning try was five metres forward! (Refer excuse one. This one is generally rolled out even though the pass was actually line-ball or backwards and given that Qld scored their three tries from a knock-on, an off-side play and a double movement.)

6. NSW had 14 players on the field at once. (I must confess it’s true. I went back over the video and if you use the super slow-mo you will see that the interchange player’s toe was already on the sideline as the exiting player was coming off thus constituting both players being deemed to be on the field at the same time even if it was just for a nano-second.)

7. The obviously biased NSW commentary team were instructing the cameramen to reflect the floodlights off their camera lenses into the eyes of the Queensland players. (I had to sex this one up a bit because for the life of me I just cant understand what Poppy, Snorkie, Joey and Gus enjoying the NSW win this week has got to do with the result of the game. Am I the only one in Queensland who remembers vividly Paul “Fatty” Vautin going ape-sh*t when Mark Coyne scored “that” winning try?)

8. The entire Queensland team had food poisoning and/or a mystery virus. (The food poisoning one is usually only used when the game is being played in Sydney, that way the conspiracy theorist can have a field day as well. As for the mystery virus, that one’s a beauty though. One of the richest sporting teams in Australia and they’ve got a “quack” as the team doctor who can’t work out what’s wrong with them. I can tell you…a better team out played them on the day!)

9. We let you win. Origin was getting boring with us winning all the time so we had to make next year interesting. (Hmmm, are we really expected to fall for this one. It’s like asking a mate in the TAB how he’s going and him replying, “Actually mate I was just about to go home, every bloody thing I’ve backed today has won and frankly I’m over it. Yeah right! Whoever gets sick of winning – I can assure you New South Welshman don’t so I think it’s pretty safe to say Queenslanders don’t either.)

And finally… the pièce de résistance:

10. A lunar eclipse which just happened to occur during a Chilean volcano eruption turned the moon a crimson red colour and our players thought it was the second coming of our Maroon God and couldn’t concentrate on the game. (This of course is not a “legitimate” excuse but I just wanted to throw one in there that I hadn’t heard before.)

So over to you Queenslander supporters…