State of Origin 1

State of Origin I

As I let you guys down this week with no 5^th Round Challenge Cup review I decided, as Wednesday is my only day off, to do a State of Origin match preview for you all. I love Origin; I’m a Maroon!

Queensland v New South Wales;

Venue; Suncorp Stadium, Brisbane

KO; 11:10am (BST) or 20:10pm (DST)

Referees; Tony Archer (complete wally) & Jared Maxwell

Teams;

Maroons;

Billy Slater, Darius Boyd, Dane Nielson, Willie Tonga, Jharal Yow Yeh, Darren Lockyer, Jonathan Thurston, Matthew Scott, Cameron Smith, Petero Civoniceva, Nate Myles, Sam Thaiday, Ashley Harrison, Cooper Cronk, Corey Parker, Jacob Lillyman and Ben Hannant.

Blues;

Josh Dugan, Brett Morris, Michael Jennings, Mark Gasnier, Akuila Uate, Jamie Soward, Mitchell Pearce, Jason King, Michael Ennis, Kade Snowdon, Beau Scott, Greg Bird, Paul Gallen, Ben Creagh, Trent Merrin, Tim Mannah and Dean Young.

If you’re not a big NRL lover you probably won’t know the players too well, their form and stats anyway. If you are an NRL lover then I apologise if I make any mistakes; as much as I love the NRL I usually spend most of my time watching Billy Slater and Cooper Cronk.

It’s pretty obvious why Queensland have won the past five series; in the last international match 10 out of 13 Australian players were Queensland players too, but more importantly, they covered the most influential and important positions on the pitch. At full back was Billy Slater, stand off or five eighth Darren Lockyer, scrum half Jonathan Thurston and at hooker was Cameron Smith. Those positions are what Mal Meninga, Queensland coach, refers to as the back bone of his team.  They are quite simply the best in the world, well in my opinion they are and any team with them four playing in, when they’re all fully fit, should and will (usually!) win. New South Wales just aren’t a patch on them anymore and have now received the title of the “underdogs”. 

The Blues definitely have the younger, less experienced of the two sides. You can take that anyway you want to; personally I don’t think that’s a good thing. When you have two full backs on the park, one being Billy Slater for Queensland and the other being Josh Dugan for New South Wales I think I know which one you’d rather have on your side. It’ll be difficult tomorrow (Wednesday) for Dugan, the occasion might get to him seeing as he hasn’t played in any “big” matches previously. Whereas Slater plays in internationals regularly and has 14 origin appearances under his belt. I doubt Dugan would be anyone’s side over Slater.

If Queensland needed any other incentives to beat their New South Wales counterparts a great one would be that this is their captain, and international captain too, Darren Lockyer’s final origin series. The word ‘legend’ is used very freely these days but that man certainly is!

I am honestly far too excited for origin to begin. There’s not much love on twitter for my maroons, everyone seems to be big blues fans! Well, I suppose someone’s got to support them! See you on Twitter in the morning for #stateoforigin. Have a lovely evening!