Mitch perfect: Blues blitz sets up series decider after MCG demolition
If State of Origin as a concept was designed to measure one state’s superiority over the other then, statistically speaking, we surely must know the answer by now. Queensland have won 24 series; NSW 16. On average, that says Queensland have won three out of every five series. And while statisticians will know far more about exactly how long data must be collected before a pattern can be accurately established, a brief examination of the numbers available since 1982 strongly suggest NSW will never really, truly know what it means to feel dominance so deeply it has snaked its way into your bone marrow.
Statistics, however, are notorious for outliers. Those anomalies that make no sense when placed next to the rest, and stand out all the more when, say, a 38-18 win comes three weeks after a 38-10 loss. But then sport has always been played on more of a qualitative field than a quantitative one. Because figures do not factor in one of Origin’s most influential factors: desperation. To level the series. To right the wrongs of that 12-man stinker in Sydney. To save Michael Maguire’s sanity and maybe even his job.
They do not factor in a triumphant return of a try-scoring, flick-passing Latrell Mitchell three years after his last Origin match and six after he debuted at this very ground. Nor do they cater for Zac Lomax taking the mark of the year at the MCG and Cameron Smith calling it a “speccy” on the commentary, or for Lomax bending it like Beckham en route to kicking five out of seven conversion attempts.
Or the kicking in general – a thing of beauty time and time again, thanks in large part to Mitchell Moses and Jarome Luai. And where to begin with Moses? The pre-series answer to Nathan Cleary who was himself robbed of the chance in game one but has returned from injury as the almighty setter up of sets and forcer of errors.
Whose gorgeous pass set up Liam Martin’s mind-muscle Houdini change-direction-and-squeeze-through manoeuvre for the opening try, and whose even more gorgeous kick set up that Lomax speccy to such perfection the online punters hailed him as “perfectly tailored for the Origin arena”. By the time the full-time whistle sounded and he had set up Dylan Edwards for another, he boasted “a bigger Origin legacy than Nathan Cleary”.
He had won NSW the game within 20 minutes, and iced it by the hour mark. In all, he had four try assists, squaring the series heading into the July 17 decider in Brisbane, where NSW have not won a decider since 2005.
“It can be done,” Maguire said. “If this group gets together like they have in this game, there’s no reason why things can’t happen. What you saw in the first half is what I believe that this group is capable of. We have got to replicate that moving forward.”
That possibility was written all over the face of Maroons coach Billy Slater, who sat up in his glass house in visible devastation. Maguire left his own just before half-time and weaved through the concourse to ensure he was on the sideline as his side walked up the tunnel for the break. Afterwards, he addressed his “glass houses” sledge that has commanded most of the past week’s headlines.
“I just called out what I saw,” Maguire said. “We’ve got a really tight group within us and I felt there were probably a few things thrown out in a certain way. I just called it out, that’s all I did. The team supports each other. You probably saw that out there. I was stating a fact that a few things were said about one of my players.”
And the whole thing must have been as disorienting for Madge as it was for the other 90,000 crammed into Melbourne’s most iconic sporting venue and the many more witnessing it unfold from afar. All the pundits were talking about the past and the Blues’ 4-1 record at the MCG, but also feeling like Slater’s Maroons had a win written in the stars. It was old hat and futuristic all at once. Like only realising The Temper Trap are still around once they started the pre-match entertainment.
Blues coach Michael Maguire talks to Jarome Luai and Mitchell Moses before Origin II at the MCG.
Then the match started, and the first drops of rain fell as the ball connected with Lomax’s boot. And then all the other things happened.
Queensland missed 16 tackles by the 20-minute mark, by which point they had survived a 16-tackle onslaught only to make a defensive error in the 17th that proved costly. Daly Cherry-Evans martyred himself on the stone table to save his teammates to no avail. He could not stop Stephen Crichton dragging Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow into the in-goal, which opened the door for Mitchell to send Brian To’o over in the corner. By the interval, they were down 34-0 – the biggest half-time deficit in Origin history. Reece Walsh was barely sighted.
“I think the whole dressing room in there is disappointed,” Slater said. “It was a tough old first half. It felt like we were running uphill. We’ll look at our game and work out what we need to adjust. What I do know is there is a game in three weeks’ time.”
If you were to walk with a trundle wheel from Accor Stadium to the MCG, the metres clicked over would pretty much match the distance by which Moses and his Blues cohort have now distanced themselves from the massacre that was game one.
The Blues here fielded arguably their strongest team in some time, and, at a neutral venue, were never going to roll over easily. And it is true there is a statistic to back this up: NSW have levelled the series on four of the last five occasions they have lost game one.
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