Live: ‘Are you kidding?’: Maroons score controversial Origin II opener at sodden SFS

Olivia Kernick had a look of determination on her face after that controversial bunker call and she’s got the hit-up she was looking for.

A few Maroons jump on board but she just carries them 8 metres and eventually gets the whistle as Makenzie Weale hangs around a little too long.

The Maroons dink a kick into the in-goal and Olivia Kernick tries to clean up, but she fumbles and Tamika Upton gets through to ground the ball.

Referee Belinda Sharpe says no try because there were knock-ons from both teams, but the bunker overturns!

“Are you kidding?!” a stunned Kernick asks Sharpe.

“I grounded the ball.”

The bunker says Kernick was trying to gather the ball off the ground rather than ground it. It’s a line-ball call for sure, but the try goes the way of the Maroons.

The Maroons get up the other end thanks to a penalty and Tarryn Aiken rolls in a grubber.

It looks to me like Jessica Sergis has cleaned up perfectly in tough conditions, but referee Belinda Sharpe says she knocked on as she slid down to the ball.

There was a bobble, but it didn’t look like a knock-on to me.

Queensland winger Jasmine Peters is playing her second Origin match but was concussed in the first half of Game I.

Jesse Southwell bombs high and Jayme Fressard arrives at exactly the same time as the ball, but somehow Peters hangs on.

Expect more of that, because the Blues won’t want to kick to Julia Robinson’s wing.

Jesse Southwell sends it long and Makenzie Weale is rocked in the first hit-up by Simaima Taufa and Keeley Davis, with an assist from Yasmin Clydsdale.

Lauren Brown, the hero from Origin II last year, shows off her boot in the wet once again with an inch-perfect kick into the Blues’ 10m zone. Jayme Fressard gets back and taps the ball back to Abbi Church. That was a close call.

The Maroons are led out by Tamika Upton, followed closely by co-captain Ali Brigginshaw.

And then Isabelle Kelly leads out NSW, as the dulcet tones of Brisbane’s own Wolfmother blast through the SFS speakers.

The field already has A LOT of surface water on it, but the deluge has halted for the Welcome to Country and national anthem.

Blues assistant coach Ruan Sims has told ABC Sport the hosts know they have to limit their errors in the wet weather.

“We want to make sure that we’re executing properly, that’s going to be the key today,” she said.

“We know that Queensland are going to turn up ready to go.”

Sims is also wary of Queensland’s playmakers.

“They’ve got a spine that’s absolutely devastating, if you take your eye off them they can burn you,” she said.

“I’m expecting a really big performance from their whole spine.”

As the rain hammers down, fittingly Lauren Brown has spoken to Channel Nine.

“We were hoping it would rain. We’re confident in the rain and we know how to play wet-weather footy.”

Brown isn’t wrong, as Game II last year proved …

Maroons assistant coach Meg Ward is speaking to ABC Sport, and she says they’re ready to respond to their series opening loss.

“We were pretty disappointed, we let the game slip away,” she said.

“We’ve gone away, we’ve learned from it, we’re ready to fight, we’re Queenslanders with fighting spirit.”

Ward has also backed her veteran co-captain to return to her best tonight, after a sub par performance in Game I.

“I think Ali Brigginshaw is going to step up, she’s been demolished this week by the media and by everyone,” Ward said.

“I think she’s going to come out and silence everyone.”

Listen live to ABC Sport’s call of Women’s State of Origin II

With the likes of Isabelle Kelly, Jess Sergis and Jaime Chapman, NSW has had the edge in terms of strike weapons in the backline in recent years. With Kezie Apps, Yasmin Clydsdale, Olivia Kernick and the Johnston sisters, they’ve often been on top up front too.

But so often it was Queensland’s finesse with ball in hand and the finishing touches by halves Ali Brigginshaw and Tarryn Aiken that proved the difference in series gone by.

But, in Jesse Southwell, the Sky Blues have their own gun half and it might be the thing that puts them over the top.

The NRL stuck with the Women’s Origin game as the unofficial opener to Magic Round and it once again delivered a record crowd at Lang Park.

Unfortunately, the home fans were starved of much to cheer, as NSW dominated pretty much all night long.

It’s the first time Women’s Origin has been played at the SFS, and there are hopes of another record breaking crowd – looking to eclipse the 26,022 that attended Game I at Lang Park.

Although just as I type that, the rain gets heavier – and the Maroons have abandoned their warm up to head back into the sheds, while the Blues have remained on the field.

Ahead of the game Maroons coach Tahnee Norris reflected on how far the women’s game has come.

“The last time I played at Allianz Stadium we were still waiting for our families to get through the doors, it was still locked while the national anthem was getting played,” she said.

“So to see it now and hopefully get a massive crowd… what we saw at Suncorp last week as well, it’s just huge for our game.

“And these girls are deadset role models…I’m extremely proud of where this game’s going now.”

Blues coach John Strange agrees.

“It’s always been really important that the girls put a good product out there, if you put a good product out there people want to watch and that’s what I believe they do,” he said.

It’s tough to find a neutral fan when it comes to Origin, but if you are that rare person, surely you’ve got to be cheering for Queensland so we can get a decider in Newcastle in two weeks’ time.

Hello footy fans, Amanda Shalala here with you from the Sydney Football Stadium – pumped and ready for a massive showdown.

Unfortunately the rain has just set in here. It’s been raining intermittently in Sydney today but it’s coming down with some consistency now and my very rudimentary reading of the weather radar suggests that it may stick around.

The Blues may have the edge with the opening victory and home ground advantage but the Maroons can take confidence from the fact they won game two last year in Newcastle in torrential conditions. 

It’s been a tough week for women in rugby league, ironically coming straight after the NRL’s Women In League round.

First, NSW star Jaime Chapman was targeted by “vile” AI images posted online, and yesterday we learned the women’s game had been axed from the line-up for the season opener in Las Vegas next year.

It’s a few days’ worth of stark reminders of the challenges facing the women’s game and the women in the game.

Tonight, rugby league’s best have a chance to shut out that noise and get on with the business of playing football for 70 minutes at least.

And, with a bumper crowd expected at the Sydney Football Stadium, it could be a timely salve.

The only change for the Maroons team that was badly beaten up in Brisbane two weeks ago is the introduction of prop Chelsea Lenarduzzi on the bench.

The move has been given the tick of approval by none other than her former Broncos teammate Millie Elliott.

“I honestly was so shocked she didn’t get picked for Game I, and I think a lot of their team would’ve been disappointed that she didn’t get picked,” the superstar prop said on her Say Less podcast.

Lenarduzzi made her debut way back in 2017 but has been in and out of the Maroons line-up since then despite being one of the game’s most damaging ball-runners.

The 29-year-old missed the first two games of last year’s series before coming back and playing a pivotal role in the decider.

“She sometimes is the absolute difference,” Elliott, missing the series due to pregnancy, said.

Lenarduzzi was again overlooked for Game I despite Queensland missing 2024 player of the series Shannon Mato (pregnancy) and 2023 and 2021 player of the series Tazmin Rapana (retirement) and the Maroons felt it.

Elliott is, however, a little confused that Lenarduzzi has replaced Destiny Brill, another option in the middle, meaning the Maroons have “got barely any size in their middle”.

NSW has won the Women’s Origin shield plenty of times (2016-19 and 2022) but have missed out any time there have been multiple games played.

Queensland won both games in 2004 and 2008, got over the line on points difference in a two-game series in 2023 and won the first three-game series in a decider last year.

So now the Sky Blues, after their mammoth win in the series opener in Brisbane, have two shots on home turf to win a series for the first time.