'The Blues played like under 10s': Legends round on Fittler as NSW coach's job hangs by thread

Brad Fittler is licking his wounds this morning after NSW’s horror show, with a coterie of Origin greats lining up to criticise his choices, particularly regarding the Blues’ attack and interchange choices.

Former Queensland coach Paul Vautin compared NSW to a junior football team, describing the Maroons as ‘dominant’.

“I’ve got to say, at times the Blues played like under 10s,” said Fatty. “They were awful. They were awful in big patches, dreadful.

“NSW defence, they panicked. Every time the ball went wide, the wingers would come in, give them free go down the sideline. They (the Maroons) were just dominant, in every facet tonight, dominant.”

Cooper Cronk also took aim at the Blues, lamenting their poor attack.

“For the first half, Queensland had minimal opportunities but scored two tries,” said the former Maroons halfback.

“NSW had bulk of the ball, come back in and three minutes after halftime Valentine Holmes, scores, 16-0 — that’s probably where it was won and lost.

“The inability to come up with points for NSW when they needed it. They had enough ball to do it, but they just couldn’t put the killer blow.”

Fittler, speaking in his post-match press conference, reflected that his side had not been too far away.

“At the end of the game, I looked at the score and thought, ‘wow’,” he said.

“It’s a sign they were playing a good team because I don’t think we were that far out of the game and we got beat by four or five tries.

“Outside of the moments that they scored the tries, I thought that we competed and we worked hard. I was happy with the rest of it, but couldn’t save the tries and weren’t good enough to convert our opportunities.”

Josh Addo-Carr of the Blues react after a Maroons try during game two of the State of Origin series between the Queensland Maroons and the New South Wales Blues at Suncorp Stadium on June 21, 2023 in Brisbane, Australia. (Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)

The second major issue with his coaching was the decision to put Damien Cook into the centres to cover Tom Trbojevic’s injury, despite the Bunnies hooker never having played there before.

“It was definitely difficult for Damien Cook in that position,” said Mick Ennis on the Fox League call.

“Reece Walsh loves to attack down that right hand of the field. That’s why they put Stephen Crichton there because he’s one of the elite defenders in the competition.

“It proved tough for Cookie. You’ve got to feel for him. I’m not sure he’s even been in that position before at NRL level. But that mindset of doing whatever it takes, I thought he tried his guts out. He did everything he could.”

Fittler defended the decision, saying that he couldn’t cover every area.

“I’m not going to talk about interchanges,” said the coach.

“I’m not going to talk about who we chose. At the end of the day, Cookie did a pretty good job at centre. He beat Val Holmes a couple of times, once I think he got beat on the inside.

“You can’t cover every position. It’s impossible. We don’t have those players to cover every single position.”

He also revealed that he had spoken about the move to Cook ahead of time, in case a centre went down injured.

“I spoke to Cookie,” said Fittler. “(I told him) that could happen, that he could have to play centre if someone went down.

“I thought he did a great job, Cookie. We had to change what we had to do out there but at the end of the day, their defence was very good.

“It would have been a bit more interesting if he [Trbojevic] was out there, obviously he’s such a strike player… but I’ve got to hand it to their defence.

“Very rarely did it look like we were going to break them or score tries.”