God almighty. I think we better pray to hope and reason atleast some of what we saw tonight was influenced by the disrupted preparation but even still...
Has there ever been a player with such a mediocre record at origin level rise to the captaincy as Kurt Gidley? I gather he does a decent job at Newcastle so maybe he gets nervous IDK but his performances at origin have alway been horrible.
And Beau Scott, what a bizzare, failed experiment that was if ever there was one. What was the point of it, Ray Warren at one point said "he's done a good job bottling up Inglis" my arse! Both New South Wales flanks looked utterly and pathetically vulnerable, I'd like to have seen Jennings possibly defend worse. Morris made a few decent tackles I'll grant but he also got caught out too many times as well.
Gallen and O'donnell, good job shitheads between the two of you there was enough idiocy to give away your jersey numbers in penalties, how O'donnell didn't get sent off is a mystery to me.
Mitchel Pearce reaffirmed my belief that these bright young things are not the men to be playing halfback in origin, they lack both the authority and the Langeresque intuitive instinct to be the chief ballplayer in the side.
Monaghan was fairly useless but i won't blast him, it wasn't his fault Tahu walked out a week before the game and he needed to be drafted after two games back from injury.
There were two tiny positives I thought to come out tonight and they really were tiny, one was Barrett in whom was confident, reliable and a bit inventive, his attacking kicking was poor but compared to other faults in the team that was nothing.
The other was that NSW seemed to have some ability to split open the Queensland right wing; generally Barrett would make some room for them then Cooper and Morris would find the gap, one imagines with Jennings there instead of Cooper they could even more so.
Scary thing is aside from Jennings and Lyon, I don't see how they can really make decent improvements to the side. Lewis for O'donnell will be handy and obviously they could play with 16 and drop White but otherwise...
And another thing, Phil Gould must have thought he sounded quite reasoned when he explained that Qld are now reaping the rewards of having stuck with Lockyer, Smith, Price, Petero, Slater etc during the NSW victory years but Gus ignores a fairly obvious difference between the NSW scenario now and the QLD one then. QLD were still a quality outfit who pulled some magical wins out of the fire, it was just that Johns, Buderus, Minichello and Fitler were even better. NSW now do not have a strong side like QLD did then, sticking with the same team will just mean more consistent losses.