Wednesday night was a tough affair and the state of NSW can thank our forward pack for getting us the series win.
For the first few years of Queensland’s record run, NSW’s forward pack was the ace up our sleeve against a dominant Queensland backline.
While they boasted Billy Slater, Greg Inglis, Justin Hodges, Darren Lockyer, Cooper Cronk and Johnathan Thurston, we had their measure up front.
Our backrowers in particular were thought of as the cream of the crop. Despite this, we continued to lose as our forward pack was often dominated.
The forward packs across the two teams have evened out over the last few years, but this time around New South Wales stood up and really took it to the Maroons.
Not to say that Queensland’s forwards were bad, as both games were nail-biters, just that 2014 was the year that the Blues won the games that they previously would have lost.
After the heroics of Jarryd Hayne in Origin 1, it is important to throw praise on the pack for their Game 2 performance. It is no surprise that it was a game dominated by forwards when there was only one try scored. Hayne didn’t have the attacking impact he had in Game 1 and Josh Reynolds had a bit of a shocker but that doesn’t matter when your defence holds strong for the full 80 minutes.
Gallen was non-stop (yet again) and Aaron Woods came into his own this year after a poor series in 2013. He has become the benchmark for props and his quick thinking to let the ball go out on the full after Trent Hodkinson’s try stopped any chance of Queensland securing vital field position.
Ryan Hoffman also had a belter, continually dragging the defence for well over ten metres.
While Sam Thaiday had a good game, most of Queensland’s forwards couldn’t match their New South Wales counterparts.
Queensland had a disrupted lead up to game two, but it must be mentioned that they only had Cooper Cronk missing from their full-strength team, while the Blues were missing the Morris brothers. The Maroons also had four future Immortals in Slater, Smith, Inglis and Thurston.
While Origin fans love nothing more than a decider, it’s fair to say that after eight years New South Wales will take a series win any way we can.
Here’s to Game 3 at Suncorp in three weeks’ time, and let’s hope for the first whitewash since 2010.
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