Well that win can go into the Origin folklore book, right up there with 1980, 1995, 2001 and 2006.
Queensland always, ALWAYS do their best work when their backs are furthest up against the wall and tonight and this series in general were no exception. Make no mistake, this probably WAS the worst team Queensland have ever sent out, but something magic happens to players when they put on that Maroon jersey.
I know this would be incredibly hard to swallow for NSW fans, but the truth is that once you remove the parochialism and rivalry, there is no way to not see this as simply brilliant for Origin and Rugby League in general. Factually speaking, NSW have simply got an embarrassment of riches in playing talent, and they almost always do by sheer weight of playing depth. Even when Queensland won 8 in a row and had a handful of all time greats playing at the same time, NSW still started plenty of those series as favourites, sometimes by wide margins, because across a whole 17 or an entire squad for a series, they just have such a wide pool of talent to select from.
This year, that talent gap was as wide as I can honestly ever recall. Queensland have had skinny depth before, but this was on an unprecedented level at a time when for Queensland even at full strength, NSW already had a vastly superior team on paper. Queensland all series have relied on guys who were lucky to be selected in their NRL 17's, let alone Origin squads, but what makes Origin special is what Queenslanders do when they put that magic jumper on.
Being bluntly honest, if NSW win all the series that they start as favourites for or are supposed to win on paper, they'd have won just about every series since 1980. But something magic happens when players pull on that Queensland jumper and for more than 40 years now they've been turning up and managing to produce much, much more than the sum of their parts.
I know this might be a painful truth for NSW, but people should never forget that this bit of magic from Queensland is what makes Origin the amazing spectacle it is. It's David vs Goliath and Queensland so often make use of that magic Maroon slingshot to produce stunning upsets that keep Origin alive and competitive all these years when on paper it so often has had no right to be.