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In its 43rd year, State of Origin finally has nothing going for it other than the dazzling quality of the rugby league it can put on. Oversized muscularity has replaced oversized personalities.
Speed has out-evolved stink. Players, who nowadays are letting their haircuts do their talking for them, are too gassed from chasing today’s hyperkinetic version of the game to have the energy to punch each other. No breath, no biff.
Which just leaves the football. Fancy that. In its middle age, Origin has gone on a health kick. Clean living at the Olympic Stadium on Wednesday night yielded a dividend of intensity, error, and the finest stress fractures through which brilliance was allowed to shine.
When the Blue wall cracked it shattered, and in poured Queensland, winning a match in Sydney for the first time since 2017. Trounced on their own turf a year ago, Queensland have come down as far south as they would find comfortable in winter, and taken a lead in the three-match series.
For the first time since 2019, a capacity crowd of 80,512 was able to attend Homebush, and there was a sense of pent-up excitement released on both sides of the fence. With winds blowing in from the Antarctic, there were blue fingers and toes to go with the dominant dress code.
Both Queensland and NSW ran themselves ragged in the first stanza. Clattering defence produced dropped balls, forward passes and disjointed attack. Together with some inaccurate kicking, this at least had the benefit of breaking up the foreordained patterns that the coaches had plotted and accentuating the match’s swivel-eyed tendencies to the point, at times, of sheer panic.
Valentine Holmes beats Daniel Tupou’s despairing dive to score the Maroons’ decisive try.Credit:Getty
Speaking of coaches, Queensland’s Billy Slater and his Blues counterpart Brad Fittler did have the puff to comment on the game as it unfolded. TV commentators moonlighting as Origin coaches moonlighting as TV commentators, both were asked to revert to their day jobs and were too canny to say anything other than the bleeding obvious. It was curiously contemporary. Try that one on Wayne Bennett or Craig Bellamy, Channel Nine.
Some individual moments were provided by the outside backs from both teams, who charged bravely into the opposition front line to purchase the hardest of yards. Brian To’o, Xavier Coates (before spraining his ankle), Selwyn Cobbo and Daniel Tupou made sure that nobody can keep describing wingers as people who hang out with footballers.