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If anyone honestly believes the Queensland dominance of Origin football is over, they must also believe in Santa and the tooth fairy.
I’m a proud New South Welshman who marvelled at the way the Blues consistently sliced through the Maroons like a hot knife through butter for the entire 80 minutes.
And when Queensland looked like scoring in the second half, the Blues produced one miraculous try-saving tackle after another.
It could easily be said NSW played the perfect game, and it wouldn’t be far from the truth.
But Queensland didn’t play badly to produce one of the all-time great Origin spectacles.
Queensland also had Johnathan Thurston, Greg Inglis, Billy Slater, and Matt Scott missing – whose total Origin appearances totalled more than the entire 17-man NSW squad.
On June 21, Thurston’s likely to play, Slater will be brought in the from the cold, and there are three willing Cowboys up front kicking the Maroon door down like Coen Hess, Javed Bowen, and Ethan Lowe, while Corey Norman has cleaned his act up off the field at Parramatta.
There’s no way Queensland is finished, they are just starting a game late.
A side doesn’t lose its proud culture overnight.
They have won win 10 of the last 11 Origin series, and won 22 of the last 34 Origins so are hardly likely to forget how to be successful again.
And there’s one more vital factor, Cooper Cronk’s career path.
At the end of the season the champion halfback will leave the Storm and move to Sydney to be with his fiancee Tara Rushton.
The move is a given, but whether Cronk will retire to a full-time media career like Tara, or link with a Sydney NRL club, is very much undecided.
The media path would be the soft but very lucrative long term option, but if Queensland loses the Origin series, there’s no way Cronk would hang up his boots with that bad taste in his mouth.
No way.
So there’s a lot at stake for June 21 which only makes this series one of the most intriguing of all time.
Write off Queensland at your own peril.