Wendell Sailor: Why NSW is up against it

THE NSW Blues may be the reigning champions heading into game one tonight, but there’s one key factor counting against them.

New South Wales Blues Training Session & Team Photo

THE night before I didn’t sleep that much.

I was trying not to play the game in my head — my first Origin for Queensland — but I was thinking about all these different scenarios.

“I’ve got to make this tackle.

“I’ve got to score this try.

“If I’m running at Laurie Daley, how am I going to beat him?”

You just don’t know if you’ve got the arsenal to do it.

You might think you have all the right tools and attributes to be an Origin player but until you’re out there in the heat of battle you just don’t know what players are going to come up with.

It’s easy to say things like “Josh Jackson or David Klemmer will be a great Origin player for NSW”. But you never know how they’re going to go until they get out there because Origin is such a different beast.

The Blues are going to be up against it because it only takes a couple of those young and inexperienced players to get a bit of stage fright and it becomes a problem.

State of Origin goes that quick. You get out there, you’re out in the middle, and all of a sudden it’s the 80th minute and it’s all over.

You just think, “Where did that go?”

The young NSW forwards are going to have to lay a strong platform. The average age is much younger than Queensland’s.

There’ll also be a big focus on the newlook spine. Mitchell Pearce is a polarising player. People are always talking about whether or not he deserves his spot and whether NSW are a better team without him. Having him, Trent Hodkinson, Robbie Farah and then Josh Dugan at the back — with no Jarryd Hayne — that spine is going to be the big piece of the jigsaw puzzle because the spine controls the game.

Queensland has new faces as well but one thing I’ve noticed from being involved with the Maroons over the years is that team is like a club side.

We saw Dylan Napa last week, the new boy on the block, they were geeing him up during the team announcement. It was a great example of how comfortable they are with each other.

The other thing is Queensland is hungrier now than ever. The players want to show people they’re not over the hill, that they’re not a dad’s army.