Maroons show there’s no substitute for experience
After a confident, purposeful display that garnered a 10-6 halftime lead in front of a vociferous 80,122-strong Sydney crowd, a second-half performance as insipid as anything the Blues dished up between 2006 and ’13 allowed Queensland to take an 11-10 win.
It was far from a vintage performance from the legend-stacked Maroons – but the Blues didn’t force them to produce one. The ninth match in Origin’s 36-season history to be decided by a solitary point didn’t feel as close as the scoreboard indicated.
Johnathan Thurston had K.I.S.S. (Keep It Simple Stupid) etched on his wristband, and that’s all the northerners needed to do to take an invaluable 1-0 series lead.
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Under-pressure halves pairing Mitchell Pearce and Trent Hodkinson, the pre-match punching bags on both sides of the border, are painfully easy targets in the wash-up.
But the harsh reality is they failed to measure up, undoing a solid showing in the opening 40 with a directionless, error-riddled debacle in the second stanza.
Queensland looked to have drawn first blood after seven uncharacteristically venom-less minutes on the back of a dreadful Daniel Tupou error on the first tackle, but Billy Slater was correctly ruled to have interfered with Hodkinson on his way to forcing a threatening Thurston grubber.
The Maroons only had to wait another five minutes to land on the scoreboard, when Cooper Cronk – whose broken arm in the corresponding game last year was so crucial to their watershed series defeat – speared through a hopelessly outnumbered and under-committed Blues left-edge defence.
The Blues seemed lost…before snapping out of their malaise with one of the great Origin tries – a tremendous James Tamou offload, a Josh Dugan break and brilliant kick ahead, and finally a room-service bounce for a chasing Josh Morris to finish off a 60-metre special.
The shield-holders grew an extra leg from that point, and their maligned No.6 and 7 soon combined superbly to send Beau Scott over. It was a symbolic contribution from the playmaking duo, who consummately closed out the half for the Blues to take a deserved four-point lead into the sheds.
Just as a thousand retractions were being drafted, however, Pearce knocked on and Hodkinson unforgivably failed to find touch from a penalty in early stages of the second half.
An errant Greg Inglis pass sailed past a tryline-bound Darius Boyd and prevented Queensland from drawing level, but the Blues’ linchpins never recovered.
Cooper Cronk launches the decisive field goal in the 74th minute. Photo: Getty
The Maroons’ left was out of sync, but there were no such issues on the right in the 54th minute as the Melbourne combination of Cronk, Billy Slater and Will Chambers engineered a try finished off by the latter as the Blues’ sleepy left edge conceded another.
Blue heads dropped, leadership waned and the sting disappeared from their work on both sides of the ball as the visitors earned multiple repeat sets.
NSW were playing like anything but a team that held a share of the lead inside the final 10 minutes of an Origin series opener, seemingly resigned to the fact Queensland’s myriad match-winners would snatch glory from their grasp – so why even try?
Either side of Cronk’s decisive, professionally-taken one-pointer in the 74th minute, the Blues butchered a pair of gilt-edged field goal opportunities despite having the game’s sharpest shooter in their ranks in Hodkinson.
Firstly ignoring the option completely when the scores were still tied, the hosts’ fate was sealed when Robbie Farah found the wrong first receiver in the dying stages, with an unsuspecting Dugan forced into a rushed shot while Hodkinson exasperatingly sat unused in the pocket.
It was far from a classic Origin encounter – especially when measured up against 2014’s series-opening epic – but it was an intriguing start nonetheless.
Laurie Daley and the Blues’ brains trust have some big decisions to make; it will be difficult to justify persevering with Hodkinson, Pearce, Daniel Tupou and Andrew Fifita, whose much-hyped foray from the bench was a fizzer.
But who are their alternatives for the must-win MCG trip? Although Dugan was outstanding, a player of Jarryd Hayne’s ilk would have won tonight’s game for them; Paul Gallen, Greg Bird and Brett Morris were also sorely missed.
If they can fight back to retain the crown – in turn becoming just the eighth side to triumph after losing the first game – it will equal the achievement of last year’s euphoric success.
The jury is still out on how far past their best the ageing Queensland juggernaut is, but the early signs are they possess far too much guile and poise in the shape of Cronk, Slater, Thurston and man-of-the-match Cameron Smith, along with a sturdy supporting cast, for this weakened NSW unit to combat.
Full-time score:
New South Wales 10
Tries: Morris (20), Scott (26)
Conversions: Hodkinson (28)
Field goals: nil
Queensland 11
Tries: Cronk (13), Chambers (55)
Conversions: Thurston (15)
Field goals: Cronk (74)