For when the brawl did indeed break out – starting from argy-bargy and a couple of facepalms between Jarome Luai and Daly Cherry-Evans – the bench was cleared, and it was the Blues’ Cam Murray sin-binned off for 10 minutes from that very bench for his trouble.
For his part, even the NSW 19th man Haumole Olakau’atu – dressed in a blazer and chinos – couldn’t help himself from getting involved, and though he couldn’t be sent off from a game he wasn’t actually in, he was at least expelled from the sidelines. This was the first time in Origin history that such things occurred, and much of the rest of the match seemed unprecedented, too, just in terms of that sheer, unrelenting, ferocity.
With 30 seconds remaining in the half, the whole thing was reminiscent of the famous lines from Banjo Paterson in the Geebung Polo Club:
And the game was so terrific that ere half the time was gone
A spectator’s leg was broken — just from merely looking on.
For they waddied one another till the plain was strewn with dead,
While the score was kept so even that they neither got ahead.
The score at that point, as it happened was still 0-0 despite NSW enjoying such a huge territorial and possessive advantage. In some ways, the penalty goal scored by Queensland on the bell, to go to a 2-0 lead, while a fitting reward for their extraordinary efforts, was a pity. A 0-0 scoreline at the break would have been emblematic of the match, and forever an exemplar how football doesn’t need tries to be absorbing.
In the second half, we knew it must open up from the opening stanza, and it didn’t.
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So impregnable were both lines – sheer, towering Maroon and Blue walls that both sides were battering themselves against to no avail – that it was clear there might be only one way to win this bastard. Usually, rugby league sides eschew the possibility of penalty goals in favour of going for the try, but not this time. First NSW and then Queensland took their chance when they could, meaning the locals were in front 4-2 with 15 minutes to go.
And then, finally, the breakthroughs with two great NSW tries to Bradman Best and Mitchell Moses taking the score to a great NSW 14-4 victory for the match, and a fabulous 2-1 win for the series.
This was Origin at its very best, and football as good as it gets. Congrats to both teams, and particularly NSW. To survive that Queensland assault, in Queensland, and emerge victorious will be surely the Everest of those players’ footballing careers.
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