New South Wales selectors will preserve tradition for Game 2 by revealing their side with ten days of leaks until kick-off, before officially naming the team at full-time.
Blues bosses rubber-stamped the move following the success of Monday’s squad announcement for Game 1, where the team was formally unveiled at The Star to the three people that weren’t already aware.
Set against a glitzy backdrop of canapes and problem gambling, Brad Fittler confirmed his new-look side would feature 11 debutants who would forever bear the indelible mental scarring of representing the Blues.
But in a shock to nobody, the gala announcement had already been made redundant by thousands of preceding soft launches from anyone with perception and a smartphone.
NSW’s strategy to drip-feed the side for the opening match was made after failed attempts to smuggle Reagan Campbell-Gillard into camp inside a Village People covers band.
But despite the wasted finger food, the Blues will reutilise the plan for Game 2, with another tantric build-up that embarrasses by prematurely arriving a week early.
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In a nod to the team’s recent gameplans, this will see the line-up being crucially and repeatedly spilled by a weak link on the inside.
The leaks will culminate in Game 2, at ANZ Stadium, as a curtain-raiser to Fittler’s formal reveal, finally inaugurating Origin’s contemporary custom of having speculation outshine the actual football.
The coach believes announcing the team after the match will ensure the game is a “genuine trial for selection”, plus it will allow those with injury niggles “right up to the very last minute” to prove their fitness.
However, the plan does present some flaws, with Fittler said to be privately struggling with the prospect of having to break the news to those overlooked after the fact.
Like Game 1, the Blues will keep the makeup of their squad under wraps by instructing all players to loiter in public places beforehand to pose for photos with the public, preferably in training garb.
Then on game day, Fittler will intelligently keep his team a mystery throughout the match by camouflaging the entire squad in the same coloured clothing, unless it’s like previous years and they just go missing anyway.
Up north, an indignant Queensland have vowed to hit the Blues where it hurts by restoring their petty policy of withholding their team reveal until after NSW’s, even if it requires the unprecedented use of TBA.
They have also promised to delay naming a goal kicker, despite confirming it will be “anyone as long as it’s not Daly Cherry-Evans”.
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