{"id":677576,"date":"2026-05-17T23:51:11","date_gmt":"2026-05-17T23:51:11","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/677576\/"},"modified":"2026-05-17T23:51:11","modified_gmt":"2026-05-17T23:51:11","slug":"state-of-origin-teams-live-nsw-blues-and-queensland-maroons-name-squads-for-game-i","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/677576\/","title":{"rendered":"State of Origin teams live: NSW Blues and Queensland Maroons name squads for Game I"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">For me, the biggest surprise in this team is Victor Radley. He&#8217;s only played five games this season due to two different suspensions and given the depth New South Wales has in the forwards I&#8217;m surprised he got a run ahead of players like Jacob Preston, Keaon Koloamatangi and especially Jackson Ford.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Radley does offer versatility, given he can play middle and edge, but given Murray is already on the bench the Blues have that kind of cover regardless.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Saifiti might not have been on many radars but I can understand why Daley has gone with him. He&#8217;s got the size and the power to make a big impact in a short time on the field and with so many big-minute forwards in the team, that contrast could be important.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Having said that, Ford can count himself very unlucky given his exceptional form for the Warriors. He&#8217;s been close to the best forward in the league thus far in 2026.<\/p>\n<p class=\"paragraph_paragraph___QITb\">Even with Latrell Mitchell&#8217;s injury, Stephen Crichton is fortunate to be getting the start. If Bradman Best was fit I wonder how close it might have been.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"For me, the biggest surprise in this team is Victor Radley. He&#8217;s only played five games this season&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":677577,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,7285,134131,4125,761,762,158,192994,13385,85,6405],"class_list":["post-677576","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-blog","tag-game-one","tag-live","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-nsw-blues","tag-queensland-maroons","tag-sports","tag-state-of-origin"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677576","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=677576"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/677576\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/677577"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=677576"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=677576"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=677576"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}