State of Origin 2018: Andrew Johns goes overboard in his hype for NSW’s young guns
NSW rookie Tom Trbojevic is big and fast and “really super highly intelligent”. Josh Addo-Carr is the fastest thing on two legs. If the hype machine is turned up any more in NSW, it might explode.
Opinion
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IF THE hype machine is turned up any more in NSW about these Blues, it just might explode.
NSW rookie Tom Trbojevic is big and fast, but according to Blues coaching consultant Andrew Johns the Manly 21-year-old also brings something else to State of Origin.
“He’s a really super highly intelligent young man,’’ Johns said on Channel 9.
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It’s fun to read that sentence in the accent of actor Ben Stiller, when Stiller was voicing Derek Zoolander’s opinion that “there’s a lot more to life than being really, really, ridiculously good looking’’.
Johns continued: “What he got in the HSC (NSW’s Higher School Certificate), he got up around 99 per cent. He picks things up really well. Tom is a natural footy player.
“There probably will be concerns, especially defensively (as a winger). He has speed, so if there is an error defensively, he can make up for it.’’
Johns, who is consulting on NSW’s attack for his former Blues teammate Brad Fittler, also said he had never seen a league player move faster than Josh Addo-Carr at a Blues training session.
On the same Channel 9 show on Sunday, former Blues winger Adam MacDougall reckoned Dane Gagai, who marks the fleet Addo-Carr, is “tiny’’. Gagai, man of the series last year, made 20 tackle busts, only nine fewer than the entire NSW team.
Even before Billy Slater withdrew, Fittler was showing signs publicly of being wary about complacency being forced on his players over the retirement of champion Maroons Johnathan Thurston, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk.
It’s a NSW team that he takes in with an unprecedented 11 Origin debutants and only 10 days in which to coach them.
“Someone the other day called it the unlosable series,” Fittler said. “That’s not showing them enough respect.”
Originally published as State of Origin 2018: Andrew Johns goes overboard in his hype for NSW’s young guns
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