Opinion: Smith retirement calls for a new Maroons generation, not JT
WHY all the talk about bringing JT out of Origin retirement? Big names come and go, and the little names that replace them become big names themselves, writes Mike Colman.
Opinion
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KEVIN Walters should have got on the phone to Johnathan Thurston first thing this morning and said, “Don’t worry about it JT.”
Why all the talk about bringing Thurston out of retirement to cover the absence of Cameron Smith?
Did the Maroons go crawling back to Wally Lewis when he hung up the boots? Did they beg Mal Meninga to make a comeback? Did they fly Allan Langer back from England when Gordie Tallis broke his neck?
OK, that last one is a bad example, but you get my point.
Great players retire, and while there can be a bit a pain for a short while, another great player always comes along sooner or later.
Yes, it’s true, the Maroons could be in a bit of strife having lost Smith, Thurston and Cooper Cronk in the one hit, but it’s not as if times haven’t been tough before.
Sometimes, it seems like they couldn’t get worse, but more often than not the Maroons seem to pull something out of their hat.
Like in 1987, when the career of 15-Origin halfback Mark Murray ended in a bar-room mishap and the selectors gambled on a pint-sized number seven from Ipswich by the name of Langer.
Or 1988 when King Wally was injured and they pitched Peter Jackson into the hot seat.
More to the point, there was 2003 when the Queensland hooking ranks looked so thin that they were forced to go with an unknown kid from Logan with just 14 first grade games behind him.
Cameron Smith.
The names just keep on coming: Matt Scott, Adam Mogg, Tim Glasby … when North Queensland’s Jake Lillyman played the first of his eight Origin games in 2006 he was so unknown that his own club couldn’t find a photo of him to put in their media guide.
Wayne Bennett went with nine debutants in Game 1 of 2001 after NSW had swept the series and won Game 3, 56-16 the year before. They smacked the Blues 34-16.
And that’s not even mentioning Fatty Vautin’s “Nevilles” in 1995. When Ben Ikin arrived at the team hotel Fatty thought he was chasing an autograph.
That’s what makes Queensland’s Origin history so great.
The big names come, the big names go, and the little names that replace them become big names themselves.
It’s like that scene in the movie Apollo 13. Something has gone wrong, there’s been an explosion on the outside of the spaceship and the lead astronaut Jim Lovell gets on the radio and says those immortal words: “Houston, we have a problem.”
Back on earth the pointy heads at mission control are running around in a panic as the flight commander, Gene Kranz, starts working out how to get his boys home.
Kranz overhears a NASA executive saying how this could be the US space program’s worst disaster.
“With all due respect sir,” he says. “I believe this is going to be our finest hour.”
So, Queensland, we have a problem — but with all due respect to JT …
Originally published as Opinion: Smith retirement calls for a new Maroons generation, not JT
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