The only thing Laurie Daley and Peter Sterling should be loyal to is Origin success

BLIND loyalty has been the Blues downfall before and now Laurie Daley and Peter Sterling must only be loyal to victory writes PAUL KENT.

IN a little kitchen cubicle on the lower ground floor at Fox Sports, NSW’s hopes of victory in this year’s State of Origin were either born or died.

The clock is now on for the answer to that.

It was there in that little cubicle on Monday night Blues coach Laurie Daley sat down opposite his new adviser, Peter Sterling, rubbed noses in a traditional greeting, and began sharpening the pencil for NSW selection.

They had no idea Paul Gallen would announce his comeback to representative football to captain City next weekend or that Gallen would leave the door tantalisingly open for a recall to Origin football, Big Gal saying later that he wanted no big deal made of that particular possibility while telling everyone he was merely answering a call from city coach Brad Fittler ... but at the same time refusing to categorically declare he would not be interested in playing Origin again.

Boys, there’s your headline.

Daley is approaching a crucial series in his Origin coaching career.

Daley and Sterling had no idea of that in that little kitchen cubicle but, in a way, it went to the heart of all they would talk about.

Loyalty against form.

Mal Meninga has already picked his Australian team for Friday’s Test against New Zealand and leaned heavily towards loyalty.

For Meninga and Australia it makes perfect sense.

Meninga picked entirely from last year’s Four Nations squad, no matter how well anyone else was playing in the first eight rounds of NRL football.

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He reasoned the team won’t gather until Monday and their recovery will be necessary early and a rest required later in the week and so he has probably two ballwork sessions in him and wanted as much familiarity as he could choose.

His team for the World Cup at season’s end, which will have the luxury of preparation, is expected to look entirely different.

That’s where Daley is now.

He picks his squad and gets a full preparation with them, at least as good as his opponents, Queensland, so he needs to get it right.

Firstly, Gallen won’t be picked.

“At this stage highly unlikely,” Daley said when asked for comment. Daley is that rare thing in the NRL community. All good and always honest. In Daley-speak, that means a firm no.

So Daley and Sterling sat talking quietly, heads bowed forward.

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Daley knows the pressure of where he is right now.

Somewhere in the smoky past the Blues lost their way in Origin.

Early on too many players, unproven in Origin but in good club form, were thrown in with moderate success until eventually the Blues popped an eye over Queensland’s fence and identified their loyalty to each other as a major contributor to the win column.

So loyalty, to the point of blind loyalty, became the Blues mantra.

And that didn’t work either.

As Matthew Johns wrote, too often the Blues were loyal to players who had not been good enough to win, at least two out of three times anyway.

And forget any argument that Queensland boast some of the best to ever play the game.

Queensland have won 10 of the past 11 series and six of those went to a game three decider. If the Blues were good enough to win one already, they were good enough to win two.

They just didn’t have it in them.

But still the loyalty persisted until, really, last year, when age as much as anything caused change.

In came Tyson Frizell, Jack Bird, Wade Graham, several others, and they took to it like they had played Origin all their lives.

Here is where it gets cute for Daley and his adviser, though.

Those men got their chance only later in the series, and only through injuries to others.

So does Daley stay loyal to them? Or who they replaced?

A lot is on their shoulders right now.

The trick is to get it right for game one.

“When you pick 17 you want to be using those 17 players through the series,” Daley said.

“Your form gets better if you go through the series with minimal changes.”

Blues legend Peter Sterling has joined the Blues selection committee.

Yet that is also the difficulty.

What happens when you get it wrong? Do you pick or stick?

There should be only one criteria for loyalty: success.

Sterling is favouring a new-look NSW side, based around speed rather than size.

It is at odds with Daley’s thinking. Every winning NSW team he played for was big and he has always picked his own team to that standard.

In past years the Blues have carried four or five props in their squad. There is a chance the Blues will be leaner this year.

Daley is listening and taking Sterling’s ideas, which vary from his predecessor, and trying to marry them to his own thoughts on how the game should be is played.

Bob Fulton, his previous adviser, liked them big, too. When he coached Australia he would pick Blocker Roach no matter how his club form fared and send him out with instructions to wreak damage on the opposition pack.

Blocker always had one caveat.

“Will I be in the team next time if I get suspended?”

It didn’t even require an answer.