Walker’s breakout Origin performance showed us both sides of his coin

Source : ABC NEWS

On April 1, Billy Slater shared perhaps the most idyllic Instagram post imaginable. 

Lying on the greenest patch of grass on his sprawling property, patting his Aussie shepherd with one hand, drinking a coffee with the other, the bird songs whistle and whip as a fawn nibbles on the grass behind him.

The only hint of his life as a rugby league icon (aside from the wealth that affords him this vista) is a football wedged under his back.

Slater downs the last of his coffee and you can so easily imagine him, if the footage lasted just three more seconds, standing up with an assured “right” to no-one and about nothing in particular, and walking off with the Steeden clenched in one hand just as it was during his most famous Origin moment over two decades ago.

The vibes were immaculate but, eight weeks before Origin I, it was time to go to work.

The State of Origin chatter always starts early, sometimes to an annoying degree, but for Slater and any state coach worth their salt, it’s never early enough.

This year, Slater got thrown a major curveball when halfback and 2025 player of the series Tom Dearden went down with a syndesmosis ankle injury two-and-a-half weeks before Game I.

The options were not as plentiful or as high-profile as New South Wales’s would be — they never are — but there were safe bets.

Former captain Daly Cherry-Evans is as proven an Origin performer as exists, Jamal Fogarty and Jake Clifford are big-bodied veterans in a classic “get your team around the park” mould.

All three would have been understandable selections in a team ablaze with enough attacking firepower to burn down even the most steadfast defensive wall.

Instead, Sam Walker got the job, and no-one was surprised the master of vibes leant the way of an unpredictable attacking savant, even while recognising the risk.

It has taken the Roosters half a decade to figure out how to build a team around the 24-year-old (and the jury’s still out if they’ve nailed it down). Slater backed him and his coaching staff’s ability to do it in a couple of weeks.

In Game I, the debutant sparked the opening surge that saw them leading 20-0 after 20 minutes.

At the MCG, with the Blues having struck first and second this time, Walker was unbowed.

Walking the MCG turf with Slater and Johnathan Thurston before the game, linked with Cameron Munster, Harry Grant and Kalyn Ponga in the spine, playing inside scythes like Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, Selwyn Cobbo and Jojo Fifita; a go-slow approach would be folly.

Even when his first cheeky grubber cost his team seven tackles and 20 metres, he continued to press.

If you were only to read the stat sheet, his most impressive offering is the 8/8 off the kicking tee.

There were no line breaks or assists, but his hands and influence were in almost every attacking raid. The king of the “hockey assist”.

A perfectly weighted kick to start the second-phase play, a gloriously held pass to create the hole for a try-scorer to run through, the sense to feed the hot hand when it’s on.

For an Origin rookie whose whole schtick is frenetic, seemingly unplanned but expertly executed chaos, Walker has lived up to his name through two games in maroon, never seeming rushed and always on time.

But even on Wednesday, when he was named player of the match in a thumping win, we got a reminder of what he can’t do.

When Munster was off the field for the last 15 minutes of the first half for a head injury assessment, Slater could have activated Reece Walsh and moved Kalyn Ponga into the halves to keep a similar set-up.

Instead, he subbed middle forward Reuben Cotter back on for Munster and moved workmanlike utility Max Plath into the halves, taking the opportunity to see what the team looks like when Walker is truly handed the keys.

And it wasn’t great.

“Queensland have lost their way,” former Raiders, Panthers and Warriors coach Matthew Elliott said on ABC Sport.

“The whole team just went … way off.”

Despite being five years into his NRL career, Walker has missed large chunks due to injury. There are teenagers making their debuts who are considerably bulkier than he is, and while he hasn’t been the defensive liability many forecast at the start of the series, he remains a work in progress.

Of particular note for a halfback, Walker’s long-kicking game is still streets behind the likes of Nathan Cleary and Mitchell Moses (or even DCE, Clifford and Fogarty) and the team, built so precisely around its spine, looked suitably broken without one of its vertebrae.

Despite Munster joking to ABC Sport that he might have to make way when Dearden’s fit again, that passage of play reaffirmed those two will remain Queensland’s first-choice halves as long as they’re physically up to it and Slater is in charge.

But the good news for Slater is he got to see a Walker-led team play a fifth of an Origin match, the score was 0-0 in that window and the valuable data was banked for both of them.

Sometimes, like the bounce of the ball in Game II 2004, things just break right. And it’ll give Slater something to ponder over his next cortado.