Billy Slater's genius laid bare after Maroons coach turned NSW asset into weakness

Yahoo

11-07-2025

Matty Johns has hailed Billy Slater after describing the Maroons' series victory as 'one of the very best coaching performances' in State of Origin history. The former NRL premiership winner said Queensland's 'defensive energy' was too much for NSW to cope with and the Blues' 'inability to adjust' were decisive in the Maroons' series-clinching 24-12 win in Sydney.
But Johns says the decision to target Blues winger Zac Lomax was also a masterstroke from the Maroons coach, after the tactic paid dividends in the early stages of the decider. Lomax is a workhorse for the Blues with ball in hand and is frequently near the top of the list when it comes to run metres for his team after getting through a mountain of work bringing the ball out from the back.
However, the NSW winger was exposed defensively for the Maroons' opening try in Game 3 when he rushed out of the line to try and shut down Origin debutant Gehemat Shibasaki. The Queensland centre brushed through Lomax's attempted tackle before passing to Xavier Coates to dive over in the corner.
One of the Blues' biggest strengths was the ability of their back three in Lomax, Brian To'o and Dylan Edwards to get through a mountain of work and make metres coming off their line. But Johns said the decision to keep targeting Lomax's wing was a stroke of genius from Slater, after he recognised how his work with ball in hand affected his defence.
Coates strikes in the corner! 🔥 pic.twitter.com/zqOo7ZecEo
— NRL (@NRL) July 9, 2025
"With or without the ball, they just went at us with energy," Johns said about the Maroons on SEN radio. "And I'll say this, Billy (Slater) worked really hard on Zac Lomax the whole series and the last couple of series. He kept going at him and going at him when I thought 'you'd have more success going the other way'. But he just kept going and going and right in the decider when it mattered most, they caught him out."
The Maroons created history by winning two consecutive games on the road to clinch the Origin series, having lost Game 1 at Suncorp Stadium. And Johns believes Slater's coaching display ranks right up there with the famous 1995 and 2020 series wins for Queensland.
"It has to go down as one of the very best coaching performances," he added. "Not so much tactically... but that bloke, Billy Slater, putting his balls on the line a few times as far as selections were concerned from Game 1 into Game 2. But the big one was changing a winning team from Game 2 just by having a gut feel."
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Slater dropped Moeaki Fotuaika and brought Joseph Papalii out of retirement for the decider and the veteran Raiders prop brought an intimidation factor and calmness to the Maroons forward pack. But Johns says the 'really big' call was to resist the urge to bring back Reece Walsh for the injured Kalyn Ponga, switch Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow to fullback, and hand a shock Origin debut to Broncos journeyman Shibasaki.
"They were huge decisions and invariably with Billy, most of his really big decisions he gets right." Shibasaki was superb for the Maroons in Game 3, bringing an intensity with his runs and nullifying the threat of his opposite centre Stephen Crichton in a suoperb defensive display.
"It was incredible stuff," Queensland Rugby League chief executive Ben Ikin told AAP. "It's one thing making the calls. The second part is making sure that everybody believes that they're the right calls for the team.
"Whatever he did in those camps, however he coaches, he got them to bite down on the things that he thought the team could achieve, and why the changes were right. It was brave. I don't think many people would have had the courage to do what he did ... but ultimately it proved to be a winning formula."