Off-colour and over-stretched … and that was just Maroons' jerseys
If Queensland are to be Queensland again, the first thing they need is a maroon jersey that stays maroon.
The material they wore at Lang Park on Wednesday night, when stretched, lost its colour. The men inside, when stretched, lost their lifeblood. They were somehow less we have come to expect. They were without their usual Queenslandiness.
It may seem beside the point to focus on symbols, but what else is Origin? That anaemic Queensland jersey also bore, as its central sponsor, the name of a bank formerly known as the Bank of New South Wales. On home turf, Queensland were in danger of mortgage default. New South Wales owned them.
In a win that was convincing yet scrappy, the Blues had their bankers. The colossal Payne Haas and the admirable Angus Crichton were as outstanding as reminder letters. Laurie Daley had chosen five players from the team running last in the NRL, which must be a first for Origin.
But the Penrith five, who used to win pretty, hadn't forgotten how to win ugly. Isaah Yeo led from the very front of the front, so versatile in reading the play that when he wasn't needed to set up his outside men he turned himself into a battering ram.
Nathan Cleary, Dylan Edwards and Liam Martin played in a way to suggest that in this most anomalous of NRL seasons, the Panthers might still have a chance. Little Brian To'o, who has missed several games for Penrith, kept having to catch Queensland kicks.
And he kept running back at men twice his size, put a dent in them and sometimes offloaded too. His only mistake was one that saved a try, when he pulled down his taller opposite number in a case of, 'Here's your Coates, what's your hurry?'
As things tended to do all night, the resultant sin-binning came at the worst time for Queensland – after the half-time siren, when they could capitalise only by scoring two points.
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