Queensland got what they deserved from Laurie’s Losers

Laurie Daley is too nice to say he told you so. But he told you so.

Daley’s maligned Blues of 2026 have joined the rare vintages of 1994, 2005 and 2024, those fabled NSW heroes who have won Origin deciders in Brisbane. So dismissed were their chances in the lead-up to this match, a casual observer might have assumed they had already lost the series in Sydney and Melbourne. It was an optical illusion, just like the illusion that Daley had no idea how to select or coach a winning team.

On Wednesday night the Blues found the balance between control and brutality, played the match they drew up on their whiteboards, and achieved the improbable. Over 80 enchanted minutes at Lang Park, Laurie’s Losers cooked up a Daley Special.

Fittingly, the most contentious of Daley’s selections contributed most to the 18-point first half that set up the win.

Mitchell Moses’s long kicking game, a succession of raking 60-metre punts, put his teammates in position to force the errors that gave the Blues an irresistible surplus of possession.

Reece Robson, at dummy-half, was lively on his feet while spearing fast accurate passes to his runners. Addin Fonua-Blake created havoc when he came on. Bradman Best and Liam Martin had only recently returned from injury lay-offs, and were making their first starts in this series, but an Origin player is an Origin player is an Origin player. They don’t come exclusively from north of the border.

Speaking of Origin players, Nathan Cleary, who was simultaneously the first Blue picked and the one under the most pressure, took hold of a decider as he has never done before. With a right-foot step inside Kurt Capewell, Cleary opened the scoring in the 14th minute. Twelve minutes later, he trailed inside Stephen Crichton and Mark Nawaqanitawase to notch his second try, a classic backer-upper’s four-pointer.

His high kicks produced contests that returned the ball to his teammates’ hands. Defensively, his tackling was solid and, in the 52nd minute, when Queensland were on their expected rampage back into the match, Cleary was alert to a bouncing ball, the only Blue between three Maroons and his try line. Ten minutes from full-time, he potted a long-range penalty goal that iced the victory. Cleary didn’t just win this Origin decider; he was Lang Park’s owner-occupier.

The usual NSW suspects, meanwhile, had a chance to affirm their prowess. Payne Haas, Cameron Murray, Isaah Yeo and Stephen Crichton have seldom put a foot wrong at this level, and are sterling when momentum is against them; and in Brisbane, when the underlying forces were moving their way, they were as safe as the bank which covered all its bets by sponsoring both teams’ jerseys.

Queensland? They got what they deserved. Club teams who make as many errors as the Maroons did on Wednesday are routinely beaten by 30 or 40 points. The spirit was willing but the fingers were buttery. Once they gained parity in possession they made up the scoreboard deficit, but Sam Walker’s three missed conversions kept a comeback well beyond their reach.

After NSW led 18-4 at the break, the second half was concussive, both teams’ rotations getting messed up by head knocks to key players. The final 15 minutes let us finally see what Queensland would look like with Kalyn Ponga, Reece Walsh, Walker and Cam Munster all in the same backline.

It might have been Daley’s doomsday scenario but Queensland kept themselves out of the picture with more of the errors that had put them there. In the end, Hudson Young poached a try after Queensland stopped playing. It was a deserved and dominant win.

So Daley has a second Origin series, maybe even more unexpected than his first, in 2014, when his Blues interrupted Queensland’s annual victory marches.

His tenure has been torrid and he could be forgiven for quitting while he’s ahead. Only Belgium had registered a bigger upset this week, and they had the world on their side.

Daley’s team, it often seemed, only had themselves. That turned out to be more than enough.

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