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Queensland had some great performers in their Game 1 Origin victory.
There was Pat Carrigan, whose work through the middle dramatically swung the momentum of the game when he entered in the 16th minute. There was Cameron Munster, who provided the attacking thrust that was so influential after the break.
Then there was Dane Gagai. He might not have been the man of the match, but he might also have been the most important player on the field.
This was a victory based on solid defence, and he was, defensively at least, perhaps the most influential figure for Queensland.
This is counterintuitive to the stats: Gagai missed 10 tackles, double the number of anyone else, and indeed, only made 15 tackles. An effective tackle rate of 60-something per cent is bad, right?
Well…no. Not necessarily. Gagai’s role in halting the direction and rhythm of the NSW attack was absolutely crucial in delivering the Maroons’ victory, because it negated the best offensive weapon that the Blues had.
If you’ve spent a lot of last night and this morning bemoaning the poor performance of Nathan Cleary, for example, then Gagai might be the true source of your pain.
It’s worth entering the context into this before we go into the specifics. All of the build-up on how the Blues would attack was filtered through the idea that it would be the Panthers’ system, with Isaah Yeo at the heart of it and Cleary and Jarome Luai allowed to create wider.
Implicit in that, as anyone who has seen Penrith will know, is a superb left-edge shift – the one that has seen Taylan May and Izack Tago score 20 tries between them already this year.
That was contrasted with a Maroons right edge of Selwyn Cobbo, on debut, Daly Cherry-Evans, a bad defender, and Gagai, who misses the most tackles in the NRL of any outside back. It looked like a recipe for disaster.
And yet: Gagai defied predictions with a performance that dominated that side of the field and forced NSW back inside, time and again. It wasn’t just him – Valentine Holmes and Cameron Munster operated in similar fashion on the other edge – but the Queensland right, NSW left was always going to be the battleground.
Dane Gagai engages Jarome Luai
There were signs of it as early as the seventh minute. NSW are in good ball and spread left, with Gagai bolting from the line to engage Luai and force him to hurry the pass.
He doesn’t make the tackle, but the pressure he places on the five eighth sends the ball behind Jack Wighton and Brian To’o, allowing time for the scramble defence to come over and prevent any further threat.
It happens again in the 12th minute, a passage that shows just how vital the centres were. Queensland begin with the ball on the right, and Valentine Holmes makes an error.
Yeo drops on it and passes immediately to begin the counter attack, but Gagai spots the danger and again shoots the line, momentarily halting Luai and forcing him to shift along the line, which again buys time for the defence to get across.
Credit: Fox League
I asked Billy Slater about this in the sheds, questioning the extent to which this was a response to a perceived threat from the Blues. The coach was coy about how they planned for left shifts, but said that his centres were backed in to make vital decisions, exactly as Gagai did in the two incidents detailed.
“We certainly respect who we’re playing against,” he said. “We have some things that we think are important in our game as well and we want to play to them.
“The strength our centres is that they can move quick and make good decisions. They’re experienced players and we trust them.
“We get structure in our defence, we get them in good positions and then we trust them to made the decisions. Val and Dane have played more centre than I have: we help them, and then we leave it up to them. They’re great players and have a lot of say about how we do things.”
It wasn’t just Gagai, too. In the 20th minute, the same tactic was played out on the Queensland left, NSW right, to shut down Cleary. The classic Penrith move is forming, but the two defenders – Munster and Holmes – read it perfectly and react.
Credit: Fox League
Munster goes to Yeo, taking away his ability to engage the line and forcing him to shift along and back. Holmes is already in Cleary’s face, so he has to do the same.
To NSW’s credit, they have the skill to keep the move going and get the ball to Kotoni Staggs, but by the time he gets it, he’s ten metres behind the advantage line and the Blues end up with a net gain of one metre on the whole play.
On the next set, NSW pull off the same play, but Queensland are flat-footed and Staggs makes 15m forwards. Such are the margins.
The apotheosis of this tactic – and the ineffectiveness of stats in explaining it – came at the start of the second half.
NSW are attacking in decent field position, 40m from the Maroons’ line, and are shut down three times in a 30 second long play by Gagai, Holmes and then Gagai again.
It begins with Ryan Matterson winning a quick play the ball – only Felise Kaufusi is at marker, with Lindsay Collins still on the deck – and hitting left through Cam Murray, in the 13 role with Yeo off the field.
It goes to Cleary and then James Tedesco, who is immediately confronted by Gagai and forced into a chaotic bat on to Luai. The move is killed to the left, so Luai goes back inside and finds Cleary again, who shifts to Liam Martin – only for Martin to be wrapped up by Holmes, who has shot the line on the right edge.
He can’t complete the tackle, as Martin offloads to Cook, who is eventually tackled by – you guessed it – Gagai. Oh, and from marker on the play the ball, Gagai then rushes Cleary, pressures the kick and it goes dead.
From the resulting seven tackle set, Queensland go the length of the field, force a defensive error and Cherry-Evans scores untouched from the scrum.
For the whole passage, Gagai gets one ineffective tackle, because the ball is tapped on by Tedesco, then a missed tackle, because he dives at but doesn’t stop Luai, then one completed tackle at the end, while Holmes gets a an ineffective tackle because Martin offloaded.
Yet the two centres completely shut down the move and killed the set stone dead. If you wanted a play that summed up why NSW looked so rudderless in attack, that was it – or, if you prefer, a play that sums up why 1% efforts add up in Origin, because there are probably four separate one-percenters in there from Gagai alone.
The defensive tactic wasn’t perfect throughout. It’s notable that when the Maroons were further from their line, they were empowered to get up and out, but when they were closer, they feared the move in behind and thus had to race out then wait.
This is how Gagai ends up missing the tackle on Jack Wighton that resulted in the first Blues try: Gagai is credited with a missed tackle, but in reality, he’s the fall guy for mistakes that rippled further out.
Similarly, for the second NSW try, the Blues win a ruck and catch Jeremiah Nanai struggling to get back to the line. Luai spots that Cherry-Evans will have to fill in and fires a short pass to Murray, who splits between DCE and Gagai to score.
It’s not surprising that Gagai, one of the humblest men in rugby league, only wanted to talk about his failings and not his strengths.
“I was definitely disappointed that I missed a few where I needed to stick, but the boys scramble and had the effort to turn up for each other,” he said. “I’m grateful for the win and to be playing alongside these boys.
“I was disappointed in myself on the last one because I tried to get up in the passing lane and I made a poor decision that allowed Cam Murray to cross the line. I was trying to defend two blokes rather than the man in front of me.”
He does himself a disservice. He was leading the pressure throughout, forcing NSW into attacking decisions that they didn’t want to make, which had the effect of shielding his inside defender, Cherry-Evans, and his outside man, Selwyn Cobbo.
It’s been said to me in the past, by his Newcastle teammate Dom Young, that one of Gagai’s greatest strengths is his ability to coach his outside man through a game.
Young has drastically improved defensively while playing outside Gagai in 2022, and with that in mind, it’s no surprise that Slater decided to stick with him for Origin in the knowledge that there was a rookie winger coming in.Gagai told me that he was in constant conversation with Cobbo throughout, helping him with reads and encouraging him along through his first Origin experience.
“All I was saying is to help out our middles,” he said. “Our boys were working hard and I know we want to hold shape and get ball, but at the end of the day, if we have to take carries we have to take carries.
“Selwyn is a pretty good ball carrier and I said we just need to help out. That’s what I’ve based all my Origins off: helping out the big boys in the middle, because they help me out by putting that inside pressure and making them play a bit earlier so we can make the reads on the edges.
Lurking around the sheds was Greg Inglis, who played alongside Gagai when he made his Origin debut in 2015, and recongised the role that the centre had in coaching his winger through the game.
“Gags looked after his wing partner in Selwyn Cobbo,” said Inglis. “It’s a credit to him, because he didn’t have to do that, but we’re all one team here, he’s a Queenslander and he’s taken on that mentoring role.
“Nobody gives Queenslanders any credit. It doesn’t matter who we pick. With Gags, every game he plays for Queensland, he’s going to do something special. He always has. That’s why he’s played 20 games.”