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\n Blues fullback Abbi Church takes on Queensland centre Ivana Lolesio.
\n \u00a9Grant Trouville\/NRL Photos
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New South Wales fullback Abbi Church has hailed the “incredible athletes” around her for scrambling until the final seconds to capture back-to-back Ampol State of Origin series wins.<\/p>\n
The Blues continued their unbeaten Suncorp Stadium hoodoo over Queensland to reward a vocal section of fans who braved the wet conditions and rode every moment of the thrilling finish.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to get the win in Queensland, we\u2019re stoked,\u201d Church said of the 14-10 win.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn\u2019t realise Queensland hadn\u2019t beaten us at Suncorp, I found that out today, but obviously we knew it would be a hard game.<\/p>\n
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QLD Maroons v NSW Blues – Game II, 2026<\/p>\n
“We knew they would come out with a lot to play for and so did we, but we went out, we stuck it out for each other and we got the win.”<\/p>\n
The contest featured momentum swings on the back of errors \u2013 including the Eels fullback\u2019s own tough moment being bamboozled by a Chantay Kiria-Ratu bomb \u2013 but it was NSW with enough of the answers in defence and attack to get the result.<\/p>\n
Her heart sank momentarily when it appeared Jasmine Peters was set to score after a Teagan Berry spill until Jesse Southwell\u2019s heroics in the last line of defence \u2013 a play that will go down in Origin folklore.<\/p>\n
\u201cJesse works her butt off out there for us, and it was an incredible effort for her to be out there to make that tackle. That\u2019s one of those Origin moments that\u2019s helped us win the game, so super proud of her,\u201d Church said.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think that really boosted us as well, gave us the energy to keep going and keep fighting and it\u2019s moments like that help you win games.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Southwell named Player of the Match<\/p>\n
Church said it was pleasing to see the work done to \u201cmix up\u201d the attack also paid dividends, particularly allowing the Blues to bounce back almost immediately after surrendering the lead early in the second half.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve got a really smart bunch of really talented footballers and we really set the foundation to do what we need to do and massive credit to the girls, we didn\u2019t have a lot of time to mix it up (from Game I) but they\u2019re all incredible athletes who did their role today,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
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\n Blues fullback Abbi Church takes on Queensland centre Ivana Lolesio.
\n \u00a9Grant Trouville\/NRL Photos
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And while the series is won, the Blues still have the ultimate goal of a clean sweep in mind.<\/p>\n
\u201cObviously we had the opportunity last year but we couldn\u2019t pull through in that final game, but this opportunity has presented itself and there\u2019s plenty to learn from and improve on this game again in Game III,\u201d Church said.<\/p>\n
\u201cSo the job\u2019s not done for us, we do want to take out the third game, but we know Queensland are going to turn up as they do every single game, so we\u2019ve just got to do our best to hold them out and go from there.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"New South Wales fullback Abbi Church has hailed the “incredible athletes” around her for scrambling until the final…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":671547,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-671546","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671546","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=671546"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/671546\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/671547"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=671546"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=671546"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=671546"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}