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Remember 1995 before you predict who's going to win Origin 1

28th May, 2018
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Billy Moore: Queenslander. (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
Expert
28th May, 2018
71
3565 Reads

Nineteen ninety five. That’s the first thing I thought of when I saw the respective teams for Origin I this year.

The narrative is achingly familiar to those of us who are old enough to remember that series.

Queensland denuded of household names, NSW raging hot favourites. Thankfully we didn’t need a Super League War this time.

» Queensland Origin 1 side: expert reaction.
» New South Wales Origin 1 side: expert reaction.

The retirement of Cameron Smith, Johnathan Thurston and Cooper Cronk from representative football and the omission of Matt Scott and Darius Boyd make it difficult to tip Queensland.

Despite having even less experience with a stunning 11 newcomers, New South Wales will be firm favourites when the series kicks off at the MCG on June 6.

Their side looks fresh faced, picked on form and the result of a deliberate purge of the group that has won just one series in more than a decade.

But here’s the thing: Queensland went into the 1995 series without Julian O’Neill, Mal Meninga, Steve Renouf, Willie Carne, Kevin Walters, Steve Walters, Andrew Gee and Gorden Tallis.

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Brett Hodgson is tackled by Gorden Tallis

Brett Hodgson is tackled by Gorden Tallis. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)

The reason was that players who had committed to the proposed Super League competition the following year (it didn’t end up happening for another season) were excluded from selection.

Sure, the Blues didn’t have access to the likes of Laurie Daley, Ricky Stuart and Andrew Ettingshausen but most of the clubs south of the border had stayed in the ARL fold. The Broncos had been at the forefront of the revolt.

Nothing Queensland can do this year would be more of a shock than what happened next.

Legend has it that when Ben Ikin showed up for one Queensland team medical, coach Paul Vautin (then, as now, better known as a TV host) didn’t know who he was. The Blues under Phil Gould had nine Test players to Queensland’s two going into the first match at Sydney Football Stadium.

It was during this match that Billy Moore built a career on shouting Queenslander, when cameras and microphones captured him doing just that as his side re-emerged for the second half.

We were at the MCG for game two. The crowd, just over 52,000, was down on what we are going to get in a week or so but after an all-in brawl, the Maroons won 20-12 to secure a series in which most thought they’d be lucky to lead a game at halftime.

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There was no problem filling Suncorp Stadium for the third game, where Trevor Gillmeister signed himself out of hospital and played in a 24-16 win for the Maroons, completing a clean sweep. There were more fisticuffs, with Queensland prop Tony Hearn suspended for eight weeks on a head butt charge.

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As fans, we are sometimes like hamsters on a wheel. We can only see straight ahead, what’s in front of us. Queensland have named a weakened team and they will therefore lose.

Yet if we look at the history of the competition, we will see that emotion plays a much bigger role than it does in normal matches – in fact the entire concept is based on emotion, on generations of perceived wrongs.

The ledger will never be evened. Queensland are the Harlem Globetrotters and NSW the Washington Generals, always foils to the side for which the match is there in the first place.

It doesn’t matter who is on the respective sides next week because it stopped mattering in 1980. The response to NSW’s overwhelming favouritism? I’ll leave that to Billy Moore in 1995.

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