State of Origin Game 1 has been a tight encounter to date, with the New South Wales Blues heading into half-time with a narrow 8-6 lead.
After an initial period of Queensland dominance in the first five minutes of the game, the young Blues got the better of the play, gaining good field position on the back of some decent kicking and strong runs by the mobile forward pack.
That led to the first points of the game when James Maloney converted a point-blank penalty with a little more than ten minutes gone, and things got better for the Blues a further ten minutes later.
All the wash-up from State of Origin 1:
» GORE: Gritty Queensland hurt by two key missed calls
» The funniest State of Origin ratings on the internet
» How the Blues fared at the MCG: NSW Game 1 player ratings
» How the Maroons performed: Queensland Game 1 player ratings
» State of Origin highlights and match report
Sniping out of dummy half as he is known for, NSW hooker Damien Cook made a sharp half-break before offloading to a surging James Maloney. The experienced five-eighth then unloaded to fullback James Tedesco, whose pace and strong footwork were more than enough to get him to the posts for the first try of the game.
Maloney made no mistake with the easy conversion to make it 8-0 to the Blues.
With New South Wales’ young side in the ascendancy, Valentine Holmes latched onto a poor pass from Maloney to run the length of the field for a much-needed intercept try and open the scoring for the Maroons.
That try turned the tide of the game, with Queensland finishing the half the far better of the two sides, forcing multiple line drop-outs and coming within inches of the try-line on successive plays on the verge of half-time.
However, the Blues were good enough to hold out their more experienced opponents to keep their two-point buffer in tact at the break
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