State of Origin 2017: How do the 2017 Blues compare to the victorious 2014 team?

IT might not always feel this way but we’re only three years removed from the last Blues Origin series win. So how does the 2017 team compare to 2014?

SOMETIMES, it feels as though the 2014 Origin series has become a little overlooked.

Sure, it didn’t point to the start of a bold new Blue era as some had predicted.

But the significance of the moments in that series — the Morris brothers defying injury in game one, the magnetic performances of Jarryd Hayne, the unlikely heroics of Trent Hodkinson — they all helped shatter the Maroon stranglehold that had engulfed interstate football for the best part of a decade.

Normal service resumed the following season, and Queensland’s 52-6 win in the 2015 decider and near clean sweep last year could trick you into thinking 2014 was an aberration.

But that 2014 series was momentous at the time and still stands as one of the most important stretches in the history of New South Wales rugby league.

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The 2014 series was one of the finest moments in Blues history.

The Blues may win the series this year and next year and the year after that, but the significance of ending that run, at last getting a win over a Queensland team that honestly felt at times that they might never lose again, that sensation won’t be matched for a long time.

The 2014 series began with a victory at Suncorp Stadium, as has 2017. The 2014 victory was the Blues first win in Queensland that wasn’t a dead rubber since game three 2005.

The 12-8 triumph was a fundamentally different contest to the 28-4 win several weeks ago, but according to Aaron Woods there are some underlying similarities that link the two performances.

“They were two of the hardest games I ever played,” Woods told The Daily Telegraph.

Woods is one of the few players remaining from the 2014 squad.

“That game (2014), in the second half, we were deadset coming off the try line for our five tackles every time and getting bashed.

“It was just hanging in there. (In 2017) it was really quick for the first 30, 40 minutes.

“That first half was so quick and then it sort of broke away a little bit, and we had a bit of the lead.

“We had a lead in 2014 but we were pinned down the back and they only got one try off us.

“We had a couple of tries lead and it wasn’t so much that it was intense for a long time, it just felt like they were coming at us and coming at us and coming at us.”

Brett Morris typified the mentality of the Blues on that night when he famously shut down a tryline bound Darius Boyd in the 74th minute of a gruelling encounter, despite a shoulder injury that kept him out of games two and three.

Morris defied injury in 2014.

The premier winger of his generation made his return to Origin at the same ground after injury kept him in the wilderness and says the Blues’ desire to truly compete on every play is what links the two wins.

“The intensity and the will from the boys to keep turning Queensland away (was the same),” Morris said.

“We know what a great side they have and what attacking weapons they are. That ability to keep turning up in defence was a big part in both those games.

“With game one 2014 we had a few injuries, so there was a lot of desperation, a lot of hanging in there.

“The same sort of mentality was there this game one, there was a lot of guys who were extremely tired who just kept turning up and turning up.

“That’s the mentality you need to have in Origin.”

The significance of the Blues victory may never be replicated.

The performance of both Morris brothers under duress — Brett in cleaning up Boyd with a crooker shoulder and Josh in running down Greg Inglis with a ravaged knee — are the enduring images to come from that match.

They may be the defining images of both their careers, which is saying something given what they’ve achieved.

“It’s a proud moment,” Morris says. “But if anyone was in the same position they would have done the same thing.

“I’m not taking any credit or anything more than I have to, because that was my job. Whether you’re busted or not, you’ve got be in that line.

“You’ve got to make those plays. In 2014 that was the mentality, we had a lot of guys playing through injury in that first game and I think that shows the mentality of what it takes to win.”

Morris is one of the few players remaining form that Blues side.

Morris, Woods, Jarryd Hayne, Boyd Cordner and Josh Dugan are the only players from that 2014 side who will line up next Wednesday.

In a way, it was a triumph of another era.

The leaders of the team were players like Paul Gallen, Anthony Watmough, Luke Lewis, Greg Bird and Robbie Farah — players who had lived under the boot of Queensland rule for so long, battered old units who had lost so many times that it was hard to tell where one Maroons win ended and another began.

Everything’s changed now. All those players are gone. Josh Reynolds and Trent Hodkinson, the halves from that series, are out as well.

Woods, just 23 in 2014, is now one of the senior players in the team. Cordner is the new captain. At 30, Morris is the second-oldest man in the team.

“This is a lot younger squad,” Woods said. “It’s completely different. We had a lot of senior guys back then and we hadn’t won the series in seven years. Every series you come into is different.

“You feel like you’re part of it more (now that you’re older). Not that you weren’t then, but you want to help the guys coming through.”

The Blues took on the characteristics of Reynolds.

Both the 2014 and 2017 Blues draw strength from their forward packs. In 2014, the Blues were brutes. They bashed Queensland, with and without the ball, from 1-17, whenever they could. That was typified by Reynolds, who may lack in polish but compensates with hustle.

The Blues took on the characteristics of the unyielding Bulldog, who played a major part in the game one and two victories despite accruing just one try assist across the two matches.

There weren’t many points in the 2014 Blues — they only scored four tries in the entire series and the Maroons 32 points in game three were more than the Blues scored in the rest of the series.

But there was great strength and desperation in that team, the kind of desperation that comes from living in the dark for so long and finally seeing the light.

The 2017 Blues work from the middle as well, but in a different way. Gallen was the talisman, the dominating force of the 2014 pack and he is a traditional, gritty, powerful middle forward.

So far this series, the main man has been Andrew Fifita, who possess an athleticism that few players can match, and who used his footwork and mobility to tear Queensland apart like he was Godzilla and they were downtown Tokyo.

Queensland could not contain the punishing Andrew Fifita.

Woods is closer to Gallen than Fifita in style, but even he has changed things up a little.

More than once in game one this year he threw a key offload deep in his own half, sparking what could have been a grim drive out of trouble into something with many more possibilities.

“There’s a bit more mobility. We’ve got a pass, we’ve got an offload in us.

“It’s just playing what’s in front of you and no play is a dead play. We’ve got plays to set up but you want to break the line or offload.

“There’s always something happening, and that’s how we do it.”

Of course, as the Blues players will stress at every opportunity, the job is only half done. A titanic as the effort of game one 2014 was, it required an equal display in game two.

There is a perception that the 6-4 victory at ANZ Stadium was dull and dour because of the low score and the grinding nature of the match. But it was gripping, compelling, forever on a knife’s edge.

The 2014 series belonged to another era of players.

And when Hodkinson, the most unlikely hero imaginable before the series began, sold Daly Cherry-Evans a dummy that turned the Sea Eagles ace’s head all the way round and scored, nobody was complaining about the quality of the match.

When Jarryd Hayne seized the ball on the siren and vanished into a sea of Blue, only the type of people who like complaining would find fault with the win.

It seems unlikely that another low-scoring gutter war will decide this series. The Blues confidence is so high and the Maroons are boasting their ace in the hole, the all-universe spine that contains two possible Immortals.

“It’s the hardest game you’ll play. You can’t go into any Origin thinking it’s going to be easy,” says Morris.

“Any time you’re in Origin you can’t have that mentality. You’ve got to play for the full 80 and keep turning up.

Fifita has well and truly put his stamp on Origin football.

“There were a couple of times during the game where is we didn’t keep moving and keep turning up they could have scored some tries in the back end.

“You know what Queensland are like when they get a bit of momentum.

“You’d like to be able to sit back and enjoy it, but you can’t until the end.”

The Blues have the potential to win not just this series, but several over the next few years.

They have an established core now, for the first time in many years, and Queensland will only have more turnover as their legends call time.

But that 2014 win can’t be forgotten. It’s the bridge between the shameful days of defeat and the promising future that stretches before the Blues should they claim another win in game two.