Bold gamble which led to NSW’s ‘best performance in a decade'
Brad Fittler got a lot wrong going into Origin I but he sure made up for it in Perth where his gambles led to the most complete Blues performance in years.
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Phil Gould labelled it “the best NSW performance I have seen in over a decade”.
And who would dare argue with that?
Hindsight is a wonderful thing. But for all of us who were questioning Brad Fittler — and, yes, that included me — there could be no greater justification than the 38-6 flogging handed out in Perth on Sunday night.
It was the first time the Blues have won by 30 points or more since game three, 2005. And Tom Trbojevic’s hat-trick was also only the fourth for NSW in Origin history and the first since Matt King in that same record-breaking game.
You go through the Blues from one to 17 and you couldn’t name a bad player.
In game one at Suncorp Stadium it was like it was every man was out there for themselves.
But last night they played with one mindset — and that was to not anyone down, least of all the coach who had put his faith in them by putting his own neck on the line.
Trbojevic and Jack Wighton were phenomenal in the centres.
Along with his hat-trick, Trbojevic clocked up 115m and Wighton 154m, and neither of them put a foot wrong in defence.
James Maloney, well, what can you say?
Maybe only this: why wasn’t he there in the first place?
Because in the first 40 minutes Maloney was in absolutely everything and when Nathan Cleary didn’t come back after halftime Maloney’s role only became more important.
The stats at halftime showed the Blues only had a slight 51-49 per cent majority split of possession when they went to the break ahead 18-6.
But their dominance was summed up perfectly from Cameron Munster as he walked to the sheds: “They just wanted it more than us”.
But the problem for the Maroons was that the Blues just didn’t let up.
They kept tackling harder and running harder and it was all the little effort areas missing in game one that continued to add up.
Through the middle the totally dominated and it was on the back of that the Blues outside backs ran riot.
Daniel Saifiti’s first stint in Origin was terrific as he charged for 55m while Jake Trbojevic’s shift to prop to allow Dale Finucane to come into the starting side was another masterstroke.
Overshadowed somewhat by his brother’s effort, Jake finished 16 runs for 133m and what a game he had.
Paul Vaughan was also enormous off the bench, running for 109m.
In the first half James Tedesco was phenomenal with 10 runs for 100m along with an amazing try assist for Tom Turbo where Tedesco scooted past five defenders before producing a wonderful one-handed inside offload.
By the end of the 80 minutes Tedesco finished with 186m while Blake Ferguson made 162m and Josh Addo-Carr 227m.
Gould explained: “The key element in the selection of this team was experience. NSW got it wrong in Queensland. It is hard to take rookies to that environment and expect to be able to beat Queensland. And having to win the experience they resorted to experience … they brought some senior voices back into the group, they brought stability, they brought some confidence and from what I understand from the moment they came into camp there was just a different personality about this team.”
Fittler got a lot wrong going into game one but he sure made up for it on Sunday night.
Because that will go down not only as one of the great NSW victories but one of the great coaching efforts.
And the man of the match this time belonged to the bloke sitting in the NSW coaching box.
The bloke who copped it all week but still came up smiling when it mattered most.