The Blues victory in game one may have been unconventional and unpunctual, but as far as we’re concerned South of the Tweed, let a thousand blossoms bloom.
But after a few glorious days revelling in our stirring heist over the Maroons we’ve now digested the result in the cold light of day- and it isn’t pretty.
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If you judge the Blues performance in game one on the game’s most technical KPI – the 80 minutes of football – their 1-0 series lead appears so flaky it makes Greg Norman at Augusta look odds-on.
That’s because NSW were so utterly woeful at times on Wednesday night they needed to cash-in four entire series worth of luck in one evening just to save their blushes.
Had Ashley Klein not done us a favour and kept Kalyn Ponga on the park so the fullback could continue pulling coins from behind our ears all night, Queensland would’ve cantered to a psychologically-bruising 1-0 series advantage.
But as history will reflect, neither happened and it allowed the home side to orchestrate a blatant 22-20 jailbreak facilitated by good luck, good refereeing, and everything else other than good management.
However, with NSW now in debt to Lady Luck for the rest of the decade, more of the same detritus in game two will see Laurie Daley’s men savaged by the jilted Maroons who will indisputably arrive at the MCG with a chip on their shoulder as big as their victims complex.
Daley’s biggest headache in the series opener other than the scoreboard and his team was a blindingly putrid first half.
The first 40 minutes saw the reverse powers of the sky blue jersey in full display, with the state’s best footy talent somehow producing more turnovers than a Vietnamese bakery.
This was compounded by the forwards getting totally trashed up the guts, with the Blues balsa middle no match for a Maroon pack that outran them by 873m in the first half to their 617m.
Admitting himself in the aftermath his side “didn’t play well in the first half at all” and made “too many errors out of yardage”, the former Raider cut the figure of a man in the coaches box who looked less like a rep coach and more like Gil from The Simpsons.
Shirt untucked and hair disheveled as he paced, pleaded and barracked, Daley appeared anxiously bereft of ideas much like an average joe watching his last $1000 go down the drain on a roughie after doing his arse on the punt all day.
Thankfully however, he was eventually saved by two critical changes on field, both of which he had nothing to do with.
Only when Ponga belted Tolu Koula, Klein went anti-establishmentarian against the Bunker to send him off and Billy Slater opted to feed Kurt Capewell to Kotoni Staggs instead of Gehamat Shibasaki did the Blues finally locate a pulse.
But unless Daley can generate an unprecedented turnaround of his own accord – or just convince Ponga to poleaxe someone again – the Blues will be pushing the barrow uphill again in Melbourne.
That’s because since winning game one last year at Suncorp, this NSW team under Daley has rotted progressively like a banana in the sun.
Now it’s regressed to the point it can get so unrepentantly schooled in a game of 13-on-13 that it needs a referee on their side to make it 14-on-13, and even when he made it 14-on-12 we still nearly bottled it.
So while this series is far from over, it does require a caveat.
Blues fans should never forget the emotion of the series opener, except for the first 60 minutes.
– Dane Eldridge is a warped cynic yearning for the glory days of rugby league, a time when the sponges were magic and the Mondays were mad. He’s never strapped on a boot in his life, and as such, should be taken with a grain of salt.
Originally published as ‘Woeful’: Blues embarrassed as cracks appear in lucky Origin win