Have faith in Freddy: Why Blues boss deserves benefit of the doubt, no matter how confusing his picks appear

With the State of Origin teams named this week for both New South Wales and Queensland, nothing is surer than people questioning who is in and who is out.

This is particularly the case for the Blues and coach Brad Fittler, who has made some changes to his 2021 team leading into Game 1 of the series. Several key players are missing due to injury, including Latrell Mitchell and Tom Trbojevic. There have been some surprise inclusions, like Daniel Tupou, Jacob Saifiti and Joseph Suaalii. The retention of spots by Tyson Frizell and Tariq Sims has also left people puzzled.

Then there were the omissions people can’t stop talking about. The decision to drop Jake Trbojevic seems to be sitting more comfortably with fans than the decision to drop Josh Addo-Carr, a player who has been a Blues stalwart for years.

There’s also some confusion about the choice to start Jack Wighton at centre, a position he has very limited experience in, over an experienced centre like Stephen Crichton who will be coming off the bench.

But after Freddy included a record-breaking 11 debutants in his first year in charge of the Blues back in 2018 and since then has gone on to have the equal-best win percentage of any other Blues coach, I’ve learnt better than to question his decision-making and ability to coach, however confusing his choices may be.

While there’s been plenty of focus on the decision to drop Addo-Carr in favour of Tupou, there are some other decisions that have not had similar attention.

As a Parramatta fan, as the team dwelled at the bottom of the ladder for most of the 2010s I got very used to a couple of things. First, my team not playing finals football, and second, the lack of players who were selected for representative duty.

Both trends have changed in recent years, with the Eels consistently playing finals footy and more players being selected to play representative footy. Junior Paulo, Mitch Moses and Clint Gutherson have all been selected as part of recent Blues squads and Reed Mahoney has also been selected to be part of the Queensland Maroons camp.

This year Eels continue to feature in the Blues squad but, most notably, Ryan Matterson and Reagan Campbell-Gillard have been selected too.

This is Campbell-Gillard’s first State of Origin since his lone appearance in 2018.

Campbell-Gillard is a player who has certainly faced challenges in his career. After being selected in 2018, he suffered a broken jaw. With 10 screws and two plates in his jaw from surgery, he was ruled out of the rest of the NSW campaign.

It took Campbell-Gillard some time to find form after returning from that injury, and in 2019 he openly spoke about the challenges that he was having.

But since moving to the Eels in 2020 he has become a key part of the Eels forward pack alongside Paulo.

He has been rewarded for his positive form with the Eels and will be a strong addition to the Blues forward pack.

Joining him is his Eels teammate Matterson.

After his impressive form over the last six weeks, Matterson has done enough to be selected and is another good example of Fittler not being afraid to pick in-form players for his team. In his first eight games of the year Matterson scored three tries, made three line breaks and had an average of over 150 run metres per game.

He’s also been able to show versatility moving from the middle to the edge and is also able to have a ball-playing role while being an effective offloader.

Matterson found out the news on Monday during an interview with Channel 9, to which he had the following reaction.

“Are you serious? I’m really playing? My man Freddy, thank you,” he said.

“Hooley dooley, wow.”

So while there seems to be some controversy about other selections, Campbell-Gillard and Matterson are two positive stories who demonstrate to other players that, with good form, they may have a pathway into the Blues squad.

We all become experts when it comes time to name our State of Origin teams, with some us even beginning to prepare them as soon as the regular season kicks off.

But Freddy has demonstrated that he is able to galvanise the team at the top level, and I’m confident he will do so next Wednesday night.

If unsuccessful, it’s back to the drawing board, but fortunately Fittler has plenty of talent at his disposal.