A wooden gate against a rolling stone
Origin I thoughts
The Blues won the first match of the 2025 State of Origin series 18-6 at Suncorp Stadium, the first time a team from south of the border has won consecutive games at Lang Park since 1997-1998, a feat that should be celebrated irrespective of how shambolic the current Queensland side performed.
Now I’m not going to give any sort of blow by blow recount of the game because you can find any number of those on the major media outlets and I don’t really think just telling you what happened has any real value. Instead let’s focus on a few key things that my untrained eye noticed.
Firstly, let’s start with the victorious Blues. All week we heard about the journey Max King had trodden to get to this point, from finding his faith to struggling with a number of serious injuries, including a heart issue called supraventricular tachycardia that took three operations to correct, and a pretty gnarly foot issue stemming from a bone growth underneath his Achilles tendon that had him all but medically retired and living back at home in the Hunter.
Based on the goalkicking last night you’d think that foot issue was contagious. Nathan Cleary shanked three kicks (admittedly all from the sideline or near enough) before being hooked for Zac Lomax on the final try much closer to the posts (Lomax proceeded to hook the ball well left too). If the Blues had felt like it, they could have scored 40 and I don’t think anyone would have blinked, such was their overall dominance.
Back to King, yes I used his foot injury to set up a jab at the goalkicking, but in all seriousness he had a fantastic debut. Whilst he wasn’t a selection I necessarily had on my radar I was all for him getting his shot, and he responded with 21 tackles and 106 running metres in only 39 minutes off the bench. Heavy impact for a player who I don’t necessarily associate with being able to play that bench impact role a la Spencer Leniu, but credit to him for building on the great start the NSW starting middles had.
Speaking of, not much more needs to be said about Payne Haas at this point. 156 running metres from 18 runs, 30 tackles without a miss, constantly skittling unsuspecting Queensland defenders and generating easy ruck speed by dominating the contact. The quad injury he was reportedly battling through all week may as well have been a papercut on his shoulder the way he powered over the Maroons, a worthy man of the match.
In concert with Haas though was Isaah Yeo, the new captain who I felt had his best performance in State of Origin, especially in the first half. He finished his night with 13 runs for 146 metres and 5 tackle busts and made 32 tackles without a miss. Most notably though was his willingness to run early and run often. So often in Origin Yeo has been content to play the role of passer in the middle, and it would have been hard to criticise him for playing that role again given the presence in the middle of Haas and Mitch Barnett, but Yeo added to the triumvirate by constantly beating the first man, falling forward and getting over the advantage line, churning out post contact metres and generating quick play the balls. He had 16 ball receipts in this game and only threw three passes. For context, in his last game before Origin, against the Cowboys, he had 37 receipts and threw 18 passes. I’d have to go back and watch again but it felt like a lot of his runs were set up runs late in the tackle count before a kick, and the NSW halves were rarely under any serious kick pressure as a result of the work of him along with Haas and Barnett.
Speaking of the halves, I thought they were both fine. Nathan Cleary maybe ran the ball a couple of times he shouldn’t have but overall I thought he was constantly probing the Maroons defence, resulting in 10 tackle breaks (more than double the entire Queensland forward pack) and several half breaks and offloads, including keeping the ball alive for Zac Lomax’s first try. He commented post game that there were some moments he’d like to have back (and yes the goalkicking) but that he was confident that his partnership with Mitchell Moses would only get better as they worked each other out. Moses was a bit quieter and maybe didn’t have the imprint on the game he would’ve liked but with NSW finding so much joy down their right edge their vaunted left side wasn’t the priority. He did also only kick the ball four times, a reminder that having “two kicking options” is largely overrated, but he did his job without being spectacular.
My last NSW note is on Stephen Crichton. Sure, Lomax will get the headlines for the two tries and rightfully so, but I thought Crichton’s defence in shutting down the Maroons left edge attack was pivotal in helping the Blues survive the sin bin period. Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow had maybe his quietest game in Origin, although to be fair the rest of that edge was an out-of-position facsimile of a real rugby league team.
Ok, now for the Queenslanders, and a nice segue into the fears I had for them heading into Game I. In my “analysis” on the team selections, I had the following notes about Valentine Holmes and Reuben Cotter. I’ll lump them in together because the fact they played on the same side is pertinent, so bear with the wall of text.
To shoehorn Toia in, Valentine Holmes has been selected on the wing, a position he plays regularly in representative football sure, but playing on the wing for Australia against the likes of Scotland and Italy is a bit different to State of Origin. Since 2020, Holmes has played six first grade games on the wing, and none since Round 14 of 2022, while his last Origin game on the wing outside of last year’s decider (which went so well for Queensland) was in the 2021 series. For someone who has lost a step, and who doesn’t play the position, it’s a huge gamble on past performance for Slater to trust the Dragons centre, who I’m presuming plays right wing given Coates is a left winger for Melbourne. That would shift Holmes not only from centre to wing, but from the left side to the right, two big changes that feel unnecessary.
- Me, on Valentine Holmes on the wing, 19th May 2025
Beau Fermor has been in great form for the Titans but can only get a bench spot while Cotter, who has been disappointing in the middle, is starting on the edge, a position he hasn’t played at club level ever, and has only played five times at all (three games for Australia in 2023, including the 30-0 Pacific Championship Final loss to New Zealand, and two Origins).
- Me, on Reuben Cotter on the edge, 19th May 2025
I was wrong about Holmes playing right wing, the Maroons decided to station Xavier Coates out there to try and jump over Brian To’o, a tactic that is mooted every year and rarely results in more than 1-2 semi-interesting contests (sin bin aside).
That meant the left edge was comprised of a front rower playing second row, a fullback playing centre, and a centre playing winger. I hated the Cotter selection on the edge from the start because to me he hasn’t ever really shown that versatility to play out there save for one desperate Origin performance a few years ago. I’m not that interested in his lack of running metres because very few modern day edge forwards are high volume ball runners (and Billy has scapegoated one of the few he could pick), and I thought Liam Martin had a fantastic game with his kick chase and line speed as Cotter’s direct opposite, and he ran for less metres than Cotter’s 51.
My issue is because that entire edge was a piecemeal construction of mismatched talent from the start, they were targeted early and often by the Blues, to very good returns. On Zac Lomax’s first try, the good work starts on the Blues left edge with Haas keeping the ball alive and Cleary breaking a tackle to spread the ball wide, but Queensland have enough numbers to feasibly shut it down. Once Stephen Crichton receives the ball, Holmes shoots up from his wing spot for no real reason to try and shut the play down, and is easily juked out of his shoes by the Bulldogs skipper, turning what was even numbers into Tabuai-Fidow isolated in a 2v1. Crichton draws and passes, and Lomax strolls over untouched.
On Lomax’s second try, it’s really simply backline movement from the Blues that strips the Maroons for numbers. The world’s easiest block play, Cleary holds the pass just long enough for Tabuai-Fidow to get interested in jamming in to the lead runner Crichton, leaving Edwards unmarked out the back, another simple draw and pass and Lomax is over again.
That Maroons left edge was suffering from defensive lapses and miscommunication all night. You could see them all unsure of when to jam, when to slide, when to trust the man on the inside, and all of that stems from a lack of familiarity in positioning. The Blues left edge attack was lauded as the more damaging edge with Latrell Mitchell and Brian To’o, but they didn’t need to feed that edge as often with the easy gains down the right.
My only other real general note from the Maroons was just how disjointed the entire spine looked. Kalyn Ponga was passive out the back, while it looked like Harry Grant was playing with a Rubik’s Cube out there at times, his brain scrambling to figure out what to do, some of his passes from dummy half either too slow or to the wrong option. A panicked offload to Cherry-Evans shut down the main Maroons kicker on the fifth tackle, so Grant put in what I can only describe as a box kick from dummy half for Coates that was far too deep and To’o marked easily in goal.
The Maroons halves, by extension of the frantic play from dummy half, were fairly anonymous. Munster lacked his usual tackle busting verve while there’s now the humdrum swirling around the future of Cherry-Evans in the side. For two halves with a decade of big game experience both at Origin and Test level, as well as Grand Finals, this was as directionless a performance as you can get, even accounting for half the Queensland forward pack doing their best Stay Puft impersonation.
One sparkling light for Queensland, Robert Toia wasn’t overawed at all by the situation. Debuting at Suncorp as a Queenslander no doubt takes a lot of the nerves away but he stood up to Latrell Mitchell, never letting him really settle with ball in hand. Him and Jeremiah Nanai did as good a job as could reasonably be expected marking that potent left edge. Ball in hand Toia had some nice touches, especially the flick to Coates for Queensland’s only try, and he was able to steal some easy yardage with the forwards getting pummelled whenever they spread the ball right. Certainly the most impressive Queensland debutant, but a low bar given Beau Fermor got token minutes at the end with the game dead (or as dead as an 8 point game can be) and Trent Loiero had as much impact as a wooden gate against a rolling stone.
There will be changes for Game 2…well there should be changes anyway. The Blues should change absolutely nothing, but I’d be…maybe not shocked given it’s Billy, but mildly surprised if something isn’t done, especially around some of the culprits on that left edge and the middle forwards living on borrowed time (looking at you Fotuaika and Loiero).
Game II is in Perth, where NSW have an average winning margin of 32 points (in two Origins), let’s see if Queensland can arrest the slide and force a decider.