State of Origin 2017: NSW defeat gives Gus Gould plenty to talk about

COLMAN’S CALL: You can never accuse Gus Gould of understatement. From the moment he opened his mouth the superlatives leapt out like salmon heading upstream.

Will Mitchell Pearce come back for more Origin pain? (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

ONE thing about Gus Gould. You can never accuse him of understatement.

From the moment he opened his mouth on Nine’s Origin coverage the superlatives leapt out like salmon heading upstream.

The decider, he said “could be the biggest rugby league event in history”.

And should NSW not win, they would be “devastated beyond anything they have gone through before”.

As for his views on what he termed the “exorcism” of Mitchell Pearce, “there comes a time in every footballer’s career when he has to make a statement about who he is; about what he believes.”

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Will Mitchell Pearce come back for more Origin pain? (AAP Image/Dave Hunt)

That being the case, Mitchell Pearce stated he is the player Valentine Holmes pushed off on his way to his first try, and who believes rushing up out of the line at Cameron Munster is a good way to get Holmes a third one.

Still, at least Mitchell scored well in Gus’s digital technology mumbo jumbo. Personally, I have next to no idea what all that Telstra Tracker data means, but the way he says it, it sure sounds important.

Especially the stuff about heart rates, although apparently the jump in Johnathan Thurston’s rate as he lined up the winning kick in Game II was nothing in comparison to what happened to the tickers of female viewers’ when the coverage cut to Billy Slater warming up without his shirt on.

Billy looked even better once the game started, even though his fielding of the high ball couldn’t compare to what the NSW backs managed.

To hear Rabs Warren tell it, the NSW kicks were “taken by Slater” while the Blues catchers took the ball “fantastically”, “brilliantly” and, in the case of Tedesco, “impeccably”.

Not that Rabs came close to Gus in the superlative stakes.

“I don’t think I’ve heard a crowd as loud as this,” Gus reckoned.

And “that was a perfect 40 minutes of football from the Queenslanders”. Apart from those two bombed tries, I guess.

But perhaps his best of the night came when Josh Dugan scored the Blues first try in 127 minutes of trying to take the score to 6-12.

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Billy Slater caught Gus’s eye. Photo: Adam Head

With just under seven minutes left and the Maroons up 22-6, Pearce threw a risky pass that Michael Morgan came within a fingernail of intercepting.

According to Gus, “Mitchell Pearce said to Morgan, ‘well, it’s either going to be my night or yours’.”

Perhaps, or maybe it was Morgan saying to Pearce, “Isn’t it time you went out the front to Wally’s statue so you can touch the shield again?”

Gus was certainly right about one thing though. It was a mighty rugby league event. We got to see Munster play one of the greatest Origin debuts, saw Alfie Langer catch a misguided James Maloney kick as it sailed towards the fourth row of the grandstand and, best of all, witnessed a fullbore JT laugh when Andrew Fifita knocked-on late in the game.

Too bad the only time Fifita had looked dangerous all night was when the cameras had caught him bursting through the impact pads in the dressing room before the game.

It was as Gus said in his final, most telling, monologue of a wonderful evening and a superb series.

“No excuses at all for the Blues. It was their series to win and it looked that way for a game and a half but as Origin history tells us, they just can’t contend with the heart and togetherness of this Queensland side.”

And that’s no understatement.

Originally published as State of Origin 2017: NSW defeat gives Gus Gould plenty to talk about