NSW assistant coach Matt King has been pleasantly surprised by Ethan Strange\u2019s demeanour in the buildup to tonight\u2019s State of Origin opener.<\/p>\n
The Blues rookie has been thrust into the spotlight and the No.6 jersey after Mitchell Moses suffered an injury at training.<\/p>\n
\u201cEthan has surprised me,\u201d King said on Wednesday.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve never worked with him before. I know his dad (John) really well from the Roosters, his sister\u2019s (Jasmin) at the Roosters too, and it surprised me just how calm and collected he is.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was obviously disappointed for Mitch like we all were, but really clear on his role and his responsibilities. We didn\u2019t put Ethan in the squad to make up the numbers.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe trusted him and knew that if something happened there that he was the next man up and that\u2019s what\u2019s happened. So really looking forward to him getting his opportunity and we trust him.\u201d<\/p>\n
Strange, 21, has been a standout with the Canberra Raiders and has earned comparisons to NSW coach and former five-eighth star Laurie Daley.<\/p>\n
\u201cState of Origin doesn\u2019t allow you to be too relaxed,\u201d King said.<\/p>\n
\u201cOf course you want to be as relaxed as possible and treat it like any other game, but it\u2019s not really like that. State of Origin is a full beast.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"NSW assistant coach Matt King has been pleasantly surprised by Ethan Strange\u2019s demeanour in the buildup to tonight\u2019s…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":697185,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-697184","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\/697184","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=697184"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/697184\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/697185"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=697184"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=697184"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=697184"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}