'None the wiser': Laurie Daley's worrying admission as NSW Origin mistake exposed
Former NRL star Jamie Soward and league podcaster Nathan Durkin - AKA the Rugby League Guru - discussed the Blues' questionable tactics after the Game 3 defeat. And both agreed with the likes of league Immortal Andrew Johns that NSW failed to cope with the Maroons' line speed and rushed defence, or come up with a 'Plan B' to their opponents' suffocating defence.
They couldn't fathom why it essentially took until the end of the game for NSW five-eighth Jarome Luai to identify the space behind Queensland's defensive line by kicking short to set up a try for Brian To'o, especially when they'd used the tactic to good effect in Game 2. "What they (Queensland) were doing was working, so you've got to do something to counteract that and we just never did it," Durkin said on the Rugby League Guru podcast.
"It took us 70 minutes to start kicking in behind and f***ing shock me, Brian To'o scores." Soward agreed, adding: "And we had the formula in Game 2. To'o got the first try and then Crichton got a try in Game 2 doing that, where they look out the back... we had the answers there."
The Blues' inability to adapt and move away from a structured style that simply wasn't working has been scrutinised around the league world. But speaking on Sky's Big Sports Breakfast on Monday, Daley worryingly admitted that he's still at a loss to explain how NSW let the series slip and will need to conduct a thorough review with the Blues' coaching staff to figure it out.
"(I'm) just trying to recover from Wednesday night. It'll take a while to get over," Daley said on Monday. "We expected a better performance, obviously, just trying to scratch my head on why, why we had a performance like that. The first couple of days were tough.
"But you've just got to go through the review, which won't be great, at some point, and look to be even better than what we were." The NSW coach said after Game 3 that his side lost "the moments" in the Origin decider but has failed to address many of the key issues that critics have identified.
Daley said he took 'full accountability' for the loss and has been backed by NSW bosses to continue in the role after declaring he's the right man for the job. But his Origin coaching record now stands at just one series victory in six campaigns, with calls growing louder for Daley to be replaced and the coach trying to get to the bottom of his latest series defeat.
"That has to start with the coaches, me in particular. I've got to look at myself and make sure that I go through what I did to see whether that was the best I could have done," he said. "Are there other things that I could've done that could've made a big difference?
"Going on what I felt after the game, I'm still none-the-wiser because I just was so happy with the way that we prepared and the way that we went about it ...Our preparation was as good as I've seen." But after a series loss rated by pundits among the side's darkest hours, alongside the 1995 and 2020 series losses, Daley accepts that the buck ultimately stops with him.
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"I have to take full accountability for all that because I'm the leader," he said. "I get that, I understand that, people's frustrations. That's what you want around State of Origin, you want people to be emotional about it because they care."
with AAP
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