Maroons force Blues to sit through horror movie they’ve seen too many times before

Momentum is a funny thing in State of Origin. One thing, however, is clear: Queensland seem to operate under a different set of rules.

Just when it appeared NSW had the Maroons exactly where they wanted them – a game down in the series, trailing 12-8 at half-time and without the benefit of home-ground advantage – Queensland reached into the bag of tricks that has tormented their rivals for the best part of two decades and somehow wrestled back control of the narrative to triumph 44-24.

As they so often do.

It is one of the great frustrations for NSW supporters. The Blues can dominate the headlines, win the selection debates and enter a series as favourites, yet Queensland have an uncanny knack of making life difficult for those in a sky-blue jersey. Or in this instance, Blues coach Laurie Daley, whose own legacy in charge of this team will come under fire if game three on July 8 ends in a similar whimper.

Queensland did it again on Wednesday night. In front of 91,671 fans at the MCG – the largest Origin crowd in history – the Maroons not only levelled the series, they transformed what had been shaping up as a NSW coronation into another Queensland victory, another Queensland revival and another Queensland decider at Suncorp Stadium.

The Blues, whose expansive style of play looked so promising early, self-destructed in spectacular fashion and suddenly find themselves as the team under pressure.

Phil Gould bit his tongue after Kalyn Ponga’s send-off in game one. After game two, however, he could no longer hide his frustration.

“You don’t want to kick them while they are down, but that was terrible,” Gould said in commentary.

The sight of Mitchell Moses slumped on the bench by full-time — whether through injury, form or a combination of both was initially unclear — encapsulated the Blues’ woes on a dark night.

Cathy Freeman has an aura wherever she goes, and NSW supporters would have viewed her appearance to deliver the match ball before Origin II as a good omen.

The Olympic great remains one of the most revered figures in Australian sport, and her walk onto the turf before kick-off was met with the kind of reception reserved for sporting royalty.

‘You don’t want to kick them while they are down, but that was terrible.’

Phil Gould

The symbolism was hard to ignore. The last time NSW completed a 3-0 series sweep was in 2000, a few months before Freeman lit the cauldron and won Olympic gold on a magical night in Sydney that transcended sport.

A quarter of a century later, with Freeman once again at the centre of a major sporting occasion, it was not to be for the Blues. They will now have to do it the hard way and replicate their game-three heroics of 2005 and 2024. Doing it twice in three years, however, would be some achievement for a state that spent so long struggling to win deciders, let alone on Queensland soil.

A six-try blitz in 25 devastating second-half minutes, finished by Selwyn Cobbo (three times), Jojo Fifita, Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow and Lindsay Collins, twisted the knife as Queensland’s playmakers and Kalyn Ponga toyed with a retreating Blues outfit with ruthless ease.

Queensland’s dominance overshadowed a promising first hit-out from Mark Nawaqanitawase, who is no stranger to the big stage, having already competed at an Olympic Games, a Rugby World Cup, Bledisloe Cup clashes, a Kangaroos tour and a Commonwealth Games.

There was also a Bledisloe Cup match at the same venue three years ago when Nawaqanitawase, then the Wallabies’ right winger, endured a 38-7 hiding from a rampant All Blacks outfit.

There were shades of that night here. Nawaqanitawase and his Blues teammates were largely powerless to halt a slick Queensland side whose forwards worked relentlessly and whose backs executed with a level of precision and polish that NSW simply could not match.

Nawaqanitawase could have scored his 20th-minute try with his eyes closed after a delightful pass from Nathan Cleary but he will be mighty chuffed with two four-pointers in the Origin arena given he will be back in rugby next year.

The Blues addressed their sluggish starts by making an extra two metres per set than Queensland in the opening quarter and, more importantly, hitting the front.

What followed was a collapse few saw coming.

Fittingly at the MCG, Queensland piled on a small cricket score, with NSW great Andrew Johns rating the Maroons’ devastating second-half performance a perfect “10 out of 10”.

Daley’s side will need to produce something close to that standard in three weeks’ time to regain control of the narrative and finally shake the taunt that they simply do not “get” Origin.

On the evidence of this latest inept showing, it remains a difficult argument to refute.

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