Those bloody Queenslanders!
Honestly. You could poison them, drive a stake through their heart, put them in a coffin, bury them six foot under, be dancing on their graves … and theyโd still be a chance of winning anyway.
For that was precisely the situation in this Origin II match in Perth, and it has bloody well happened again.
In Origin I, as youโll recall, NSW won at Suncorp 18-6 and were unlucky not to have won by 30 points. On the strength of that, 10 of the 11 Sydney Morning Herald experts, quite rightly predicted a Queensland loss, by as much as 28 points. How could they do anything else, on the facts available? What is more, after the first 10 minutes of this Origin II match, when the old firm of Nathan Cleary, Jarome Luai and Brian Toโo again combined to put Toโo over in the corner, it was obvious that Queensland were done and dusted. Of course this was going to be another NSW win, and the series secured!
And yet, what did we see?
From that point on, for the rest of the half, it was all Queensland, all the time, to the point they went into half-time leading 26-6, and looked like they were just warming up!
Cameron Munster celebrates scoring a try.Credit: Getty Images
The whole cavalcade was helped by a desperately disappointing NSW side. There was some irony in the fact that because of a sponsorship arrangement, every NSW player had โThe Starโ printed on their back in large letters when โ in truth โ none of the Blues stars truly shone in that first half. Cleary, even hampered by a leg injury, had his moments, as did Luai and Liam Martin, but no one truly emerged to turn the Maroon tide.
The fact that in the second half NSW came back into it in such stunning fashion was great for the spectacle, and their four successive tries actually made you think that the Blues might pull off a miracle and win anyway.
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