Australian rugby league legend Ray Price advice for the ‘pathetic’ Maroons heading into Gold Coast’s Origin game

Australian rugby league legend Ray Price has some advice for the so far ‘pathetic’ Maroons ahead of tonight’s Gold Coast clash. WHAT HE SAID >>>

AUSTRALIAN rugby league legend Ray Price says the Maroons need to apply the same approach he took to cancer to have any chance: “You have to keep fighting.”

The unlikely advice from the dyed-in-the-wool NSW hardman comes as he reveals his own battle with melanoma cancer is over for now, having gone into remission a few months ago.

Rugby league legend Ray Price reckons NSW will crush the Maroons at Gold Coasts CBUS Stadium'. Picture Glenn Hampson

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His lively spirit and fighting qualities are just as evident as they were in his rugby league playing days. The now 68-year-old says he won’t be making the trip over the border from his Tweed home to join an expected sellout crowd at Cbus Stadium at Robina: “No, no, no – I”ll watch it at home. Too many Queenslanders there.”

Asked if the embattled Maroons had a chance in game three after a hammering in the first two, he said: “Realistically … no I don’t believe that. But again, Queensland can make it a good, hard game if they do some good, hard defence. If you can’t tackle, don’t play.

Rugby league legend Ray Price will be at home in the Tweed watching Origin III. He won't be going because there are “too many Queenslanders”. Picture Glenn Hampson

“I can’t see how Queensland can do anything. Have a look at the scores, have a look at the football played in those two games. They were pathetic.

“You just have to keep fighting and I believe that is what they have not done in their games. They have not kept fighting. There is no easy way out if you want to achieve things. You have to do it the hard way,” he said.

Price, who played rugby union and league for Australia and won four premierships with the Paramatta Eels but was never part of a winning NSW Origin side, said his comeback along with wife Sandy from cancer had been “a battle” just like “mate on mate” footy: “You just have to keep fighting. I was stage three, Sandy was stage four – and there is no stage five. She had nowhere to go and we just kept fighting.”

He put his failure to win an Origin series down to officialdom: “I was in an era when a Queenslander was the referee – and you couldn’t beat him. I asked him why he cheated before he died and he said ‘My boys needed a hand’.”

Asked if he would have won a State of Origin if not for the Queensland referee, he replied: “Oh, shit yeah – easy. But what’s the point complaining about it? Mate, when I win something, I win it on our behalf – not the referee’s. You can quote that.”

Nowadays, the man dubbed “Mr Perpetual Motion” during his playing career said he enjoyed keeping busy by tending to an opal mine in NSW which he calls “good fun”.

He still attends an annual reunion with members of his champion Eels sides from the early 1980s, saying the “camaraderie is still potent now”.

“We’re all still mates and all see each other. We have a reunion every year and it’s a good thing. We get together and there’s a lot of great memories.”