Paul Kent: State of Origin series proves Queensland are everything NSW used to be
NSW is one win from achieving a piece of history that will never be repeated — and it will overwrite years of Origin pain, writes Paul Kent.
Opinion
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Suddenly the memory of a little pub at Lennox Head is dead.
Success is a great amnesia.
Who can bother remembering how bad it got for NSW when Queensland was winning eight years in a row and every even break went 6-4 against the Blues when, now, the Blues are on the brink of a 3-0 sweep.
With the added sweetener of all three games played in Queensland.
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It will never happen again.
Who cares to remember another series loss, many years before, when Queensland upset NSW and in the Maroons dressing room after the game all the Maroons’ threats had gathered and one of them, of the ginger variety, said to the others standing around, “You know the best thing?”
They waited.
“Next door they will be eating each other alive,” he said.
It was true, of course.
The Blues had lost a series they never should have lost and in their dressing room sideways looks were happening everywhere.
Now, the Blues have delivered their greatest insult on Queensland … that they have become what NSW used to be, back in their lost in the wilderness days.
The Maroons are fumbling for answers, lurching from one disaster to the next as they try to find a way to compete with NSW.
All while being absolutely aware that this Origin campaign has been a disaster.
For Game I, through no fault of their own, Queensland picked a pop-gun attack that was always going to struggle against a NSW side full of points. Their problem was not that they could not score points, but that they believed they could.
By Game II, though, their troubles were clear.
Queensland was never going to be able to pick a team capable of outscoring NSW. There simply were not the calibre of players available.
In times like these the Maroons always knew what to do, though.
Wayne Bennett showed it last year.
They would pick a team to defend like they were protecting the Queen and turn the game into one of attrition. Make it a defensive game instead of a try shootout.
Yet for Game II the Maroons picked seven-game rookie Reece Walsh at fullback, apparently hoping Walsh somehow had enough points in him to overcome the 50-6 loss in Game I.
It got worse, though.
Walsh was ruled out late with injury and into the team came Ronaldo Mulitalo who, we all discovered, was ineligible to play for Queensland.
It was embarrassing and it became the metaphor for Queensland this series.
Queensland then tripled down on their own version of ineptness last week when, trying to save the series being lost 3-0 in home territory Jai Arrow was kicked out of camp for one of the more bizarre breaches of Covid protocols that could be imagined.
Arrow invited a female dancer into camp.
The Maroons are in a place they have only ever been a few times before.
Queensland coach Paul Green said nothing more than a prepared statement in explanation of the Arrow incident.
There was a time not so long ago when the Maroons would have laughed heartily at NSW bumbling along in such a way, so pathetically hopeless they were not even sure whether a player was qualified to play for them or not.
And the Blues gave them plenty to laugh at.
When the Blues were looking to wrap up the series squared at one-all in 2017 and Josh Dugan and Blake Ferguson chose to spend their day off at the Lennox Head pub, drinking a little more and staying a little longer than what was reported, the Maroons giggled hysterically.
Poor NSW, they said, they’ll never get it.
And they were right.
The Blues had lost the perspective for what it took to win Origin games.
And each time the only way out is clear-headed thinking with precise, deliberate management.
But the Blues showed there is no assumption it will simply happen.
NSW lost its way early in 2006 and by the time anybody properly identified the problem the Blues were many series down and in need of several years of rebuild to fix it.
Supposedly the hope for the Maroons right now is Billy Slater. Green apparently no longer considered an option.
And slowly the Maroons turn on their own, the one quality they claimed separated them from NSW.
“All of a sudden we are a rabble bunch of people,” QRL chairman Bruce Hatcher said Monday.
“We have lost two out of three series.”
He is clearly exasperated.
“I didn’t see the same spotlight when NSW lost eight,” he said.
It all seemed to turn bad again over the weekend when Channel 9 commentator Paul Vautin revealed Slater had been given the Queensland job earlier only for the Maroons to renege and order him in for an interview.
It was a solid go but far removed from any truth.
Slater was never given the job as Queensland coach so the QRL never could have reneged.
Slater went through an interview process the same as Green.
A three-man subcommittee interviewed both and decided Green was the best candidate and gave him the job and Slater was offered work as an assistant.
The Maroons viewed it as a succession plan.
Slater declined that opportunity and is now, as the Maroons struggle, saying that he is unwilling to go through an interview process and would take the job only if he is directly appointed.
As Queensland work on becoming old-NSW it raises that other rugby league folklore.
Great players do not always transition to great coaches.
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