(Is that muh-roon or meh-roan? I understand the latter pronunciation is only found in Australia.)
Everything is hotly contested in State of Origin matches, so there is no such thing as a dead rubber. Tonight in SOO3 the Maroons will want to inflict a series whitewash on the Blues, not achieved since 1995. They will also want to drive home the psychological ascendancy going into 2008.
Series whitewashes have been achieved six times. The record to date is three each. In addition, Queensland won the first two ‘series’ in 1980 and 1981 when there was only one match each year.
Another question is whether we are establishing a new Queensland dynasty or era of dominance. There is no official way of defining these things but I’d say three consecutive series wins is a disaster for the losing side. Again it has happened four times, splitting twice each way. The problem here is that by the time you’ve achieved your third series win, the record shows that your time is almost certainly up. The exception was the first five (1980-1984) which Queensland won.
There are longer patterns, however. In the first 10 years (1980-1989) NSW only won the series twice. Then from 1990 to 2005 the split was 10/4 to NSW with two series drawn. So it’s our turn, right?
Another remarkable fact is that Queensland has only had three winning coaches. Beetson achieved 11/5, Bennett 11/10 plus a draw. Mighty Mal is now on 4/1. Other than that we had the Kiwi Graham Lowe at 3/3 and the other five lost. Sorry, there was also John McDonald who won the first one in 1980.
The match itself looks mouth-watering. Paul Simpkins as referee should provide an open game and the track should be fast. Queensland has replaced Lillyman with Matt Bowen, so Qld will have one fewer big man. Clearly Dallas Johnson who executed 62 tackles in Game 2 will get a lot of game time.
It seems clear that Qld will try to blow NSW off the park in the latter stages of the game when the big men tire. There is talk of using Karmichael Hunt closer to the ruck, but he will definitely start at full-back, so they say. We might see Bowen at the back, Hunt at lock and Berrigan in the second row at some stage in the match.
NSW has arguably been strengthened by including Hazem El Masri for Jamie Lyons and moving Matt King back to the centres. King leaked a few tries on the wing in the first two games. But now we have Greg Inglis marking El Masri with a height advantage of 17cm and a weight advantage of 13kg.
I can never pick the outcome of these matches. It could be either way by a centimeter or two, but there is also the possibility of a blow-out either way.
I’ll be watching at my brother’s place. Yes they’ve invited us back even though last time the cushion on the couch tipped over a glass of wine when I swivelled around in excitement. The wine splashed onto the new white curtain they had hung that day! There’s talk of wine being served in one of those baby feeder mugs!
That’s kinda interesting, because it suggests that in Australian English, there’s a different pronunciation for the verb to maroon and the noun maroon, which have distinctly different meanings.
http://www.thefreedictionary.com/maroon
Queenslanders will be proud that the Urban Dictionary lists “maroon” (the noun) with a definition specifically relating to the State of Origin team, but possibly not happy to read its other colloquial meanings:
http://www.urbandictionary.com/define.php?term=maroon
The cornerstone of QLD’s series win was their behind the scenes scheming to have Murray selected last year as NSW coach. It was a brilliant move and a big factor in their win.
Murray hasn’t had much to work with in his defence. Its going to be tough for NSW in the next couple of years while they rebuild their side and for them the worse is probably yet to come. This is an exceptional QLD side especially in the backline and imo over the next few years they will show that they are right up there with the some of the great QLD backlines of the past. I’m sure alot of the players left out of this QLD backline would easily get a start in the NSW side and that says it all about their depth at the moment. The only team who will inflict a blow out is QLD but that all depends on whether the referee allows the game to open up or not. Whether its a fast open game or an arm wrestle this QLD side is capable of beating this NSW side in either. QLD by 24
Jeeze you Qld’ers are a pathetic lot.
Shaun there’s little doubt Murray is for the chop. The NRL site has a poll for the next NSW coach. I could urge all Queenslanders to pop along and vote for Tommy Raudonikus rather than Bellamy or Sheens. But I won’t.
We had three coaches who lost two series – Wally Lewis, Mark Murray and Michael Hagan.
It’s half-time. I suspect NSW will win. Qld has too many injuries.
Yep too many injuries and in the end it all told. Still QLD did a mighty job to stay competitive as long as they did and considering that last try was a lost ball the margin wasn’t that great.
Simpkins obviously got the message from his sacking from the second game. I lost count on the amount of time the third blues player flopped on his mates making the tackle. Usualy penalised at club level. The 50\50 decisions certainly went with NSW and Simpkins imo certainly had it in mind which team it was better not to upset. As they say in the classics thats football.
Great game. NSW deserved to win – tho not by as much as they did
It was the injuries and the ref. Never happy up north it seems.
The Blues finally played to their strengths (hence Hayne and El Masri scoring). Still QLD were gallant in defeat and worth foes. Enjoy the series win as NSW will come back next year and this year will mean nothing.
Apologies for not having a chance to live blog Origin as well.
It’s muh-roon, you cockroach
No different to it was the coach the ref and Hindmarsh not getting eighty minutes I guess.
I’m not from up North and have supported NSW in the past but I have got to say QLD have never had a fair shake from the ref in the modern era. Blind Freddy could tell you while NSW have the casting vote on who refs that that will be the case. The officiating has been so pro NSW for so long that when you get the odd ref who puts in a balanced performance he is so pilloried by Gould and the general football media that he soon gets the message not to make that mistake again.
It had been said that Bird and Gallen would improve the Blues’ team. Two blockie players, hard to tackle, can step and off-load. I didn’t know anything about them, but they did make a difference.
We went in one forward short to fit Bowen into the team and when we lost Johnson in the first tackle it threw the game plan into disarray. It’s a 17 man game and one short is a problem. Three short is pretty much insuperable.
My Oxford Australian Dictionary gives both pronunciations for maroon. For me it’s always been meh-roan, firmly accented on the second syllable of course. But the ABC’s language expert said that north of the border was muh-roon. But then he was a Mexican, so would he really know?
Big difference. I’m being objective.
Funny how you don’t complain about the ref when you win.
Let it be recorded here that my reaction after the game was that the ref had a good game.
That being said, I agree with Warren Ryan that the notion of “dominant tackles” and players saying, “We have to win the wrestling” is a blot on the game. Ryan says that the rules committee decided a couple of years ago that more latitude would be given in this area after North Queensland and Wests-Tigers contested the grand final by playing fast open football. The big influence on the rules committee is the coaches and they wanted more given back to the defence because they didn’t have the players to match the NQ and the Tiges. Ryan was there at the meeting where it happened.
It’s not in the interests of the game – basically a disgrace. It makes our game less attractive than the English game.
I know that a couple of years ago NSW were using a stopwatch to time the holding down so they could maximise it. So you can assume that all teams are coached to do it now.
Last night as Queensland tired I think NSW were getting more people into the tackles which probably is why they were being given more latitude under a stupid rule.
On the other hand as Bennett said a couple of years ago, refs know what to do to avoid being sacked. It happened in the first season when the Broncos entered the competition and were playing Manly. Annesley missed a bounced put-down between the posts. The following week he was refereeing reserve grade.
So Kapunda might be right. You’d need a scientific investigation to prove it, though.
Meanwhile I’m sick of these cheap shots whenever someone brings up the refereeing. I brought it up in the first two games when we won. I don’t think the standard of refereeing is all that good, so I’d hope we could talk about it sensibly.
Re: Ref
He did everything he could to give QLD the win. I don’t think he had a good game at all. That said anyone could’ve been a better ref than Hayne.
Nor would I select Kimmorley as half back in NSW side without Bird outside of him
In fact most of the NSW team I wouldn’t have selected – that’s one of the reasons they lost.
Well Brian, DONT YOU FEEL STUPID NOW!
No. Why would I?
“He did everything he could to give QLD the win”
A bit of detail wouldn’t go astray there.
On balance NSW did very well as usual with the referees. Simpkins reffed like a man who did not want to put any blue noses out of joint. He learned his lesson from game one.
The amount of squealing from NSW after game two would have done a rollercoaster ride proud. Danny Buderis crying about the ruck area is like Ronny Biggs complaining about theft. Buderis a great player without doubt but certainly gets a lot of lattitude at times from referees and probably gets through at least three forward passes per match that other players wouldn’t get away with. His complaint about Price taking a dive was absolutely laughable. Did anybody bother to ask Bailey why he would put himself in a position like that while having the ball in his hand. It was just plain dumb play from Bailey no doubt about it.
I don’t rate Shane Hayne but to suggest he contributed to NSW loss in game 2 is just plain silly. NSW had enough ball in game 2 to win three origins and couldn’t do it. Not good enough fullstop.
Absolutely correct. We haven’t been given a single instance of how the ref helped Qld. Actually I thought the pass from Hunt to Hodges which resulted in the first Qld try may have been marginally forward.
But before the first NSW try we were pressing the NSW line, the ball came free and NSW were given the scrum. The video showed that there was a strip. I couldn’t blame the ref for not seeing it. It is probably an example of where intervention from the video ref would be helpful, because that particular problem happens quite frequently.