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I was watching State of Origin II with a Maroons mate of mine on Wednesday night at my local bowling club (as you do).
I said to him at half time “Why was it that when Sam Thaiday dropped the ball it was racked out and yet when the same thing happened five minutes later and Cameron Smith quite obviously stripped the ball from Storm teammate Ryan Hoffman it was play on?”
“And,” I noted, “a 5-2 penalty count to the Maroons certainly wasn’t hurting their cause to look the more dominant side”.
That’s when he said to me, “And that’s exactly how it should be for the good of the game Boydy, what did you expect?”
“Exactly how it should be!! What the bloody hell do you mean by that?” I replied.
“C’mon mate” he said, “you’ve been living here in Queensland for over ten years now, you must know that if Queensland were to loose here tonight and go down 2-0 in the series there wouldn’t be a single Maroons supporter tuning in to game 3.”
His honesty took me back to a article Warren Ryan wrote several years ago when he said something to the affect that State Of Origin will only be successful if Queensland are competitive. If NSW were to dominate it would quickly loose interest north of the border.
At the time I that Warren was just being Warren but then I saw it first hand here. Before Queensland’s current seven straight winning streak, NSW had won 10 of the previous 16 years with two drawn series.
Given that Queensland were only winning on a one in four series basis, questions were starting to be asked up here about the series’ worth, particularly from Broncos supporters.
They weren’t happy that half their star-studded side were out-of-action for 6-8 weeks in the middle of every season.
Queensland were just winning regularly enough to keep the passion alive. Two more series wins in a row for NSW and I reckon State of Origin would have at best been reduced to a stand alone game each year.
I know I’ll be howled down by all the Queensland haters for writing this but I really think my mate was right. It was certainly in the interest of the State of Origin series, and rugby league in general for the Maroons to get up last Wednesday night.
Having said that can I please now appeal to Daniel Anderson that those two clowns masquerading as referees have done their job for the ‘good of the game’ and can we please now get a couple of decent whistle blowers for game three.
It would be fantastic if we were talking about how good the game itself was and not how many controversial refereeing decisions there were, in the morning after the game.
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