I'm gonna start with my opinion on the players.
On the grubs side:
Luke Lewis absolutely deserved MOM tonight, he was outstanding!
Greg Bird, Jennings, Hoffman and Hayne (when he wasn't diving) were also very very good, while the rest did their job.
Pearce and Maloney are meh and won't ever really worry me to be honest.
On the Mighty Maroons side:
Parker and Hodges were excellent.
Cameron Smith tried his hardest to lead a pack that certainly lacked punch, but was also very limited by the ***** in pink, but more about that later.
The bench was the least of our worries, although McQueen is probably a bit light for this arena.
The worst players on the park were Inglis (who barely saw any ball), a clearly underdone Thurston, and Cronk who played the worst game I've ever seen from a Qld halve. And he still was as good as Pearce!
Yes, NSW out enthused us, yes, Qld's forwards lacked punch, and yes the Jennings try cannot happen at Origin level, that was 3 missed and 2 ineffective tries in one single play! But that was only part of what won the game for NSW...
What I find totally unacceptable is that the refs use two different measures to police the teams.
I just watched the first 20 minutes of the game again to ensure I wasn't influenced by my maroon glasses, and not once, I mean not ONCE, was NSW onside during a Qld play the ball. On the other hand, that absolutely worthless unwashed wandeling ball sack named Klein was keeping the Qld line 12, 13 meters continuously back.
In a game of such high energy and speed, that is a devastating advantage for a team, especially one who already came out with more energy like NSW.
Add to that the Hoffman knock on, the Gallen episode and the amount of soft get out of jail penalties gifted to NSW, and I think Qld did pretty well to lose only by 14-6.
With a fit Thurston and the Qld public behind us, I hope the refs return the favour at Suncorp, so we can send them packing with 30 or 40 in the bag.
Now to the Qld approach...
I don't know how much influence the lack of go forward and the crappy game from our halves influenced things, but we absolutely botched our game plan, which I hope was to involve Inglis much more than we did, and certainly didn't include a let's take it slow and let them get a roll on us from the start. Some of it was imposed, but I hope this gets corrected come game 2.
Also, we need Parker in the starting team and Harrison out. The latter seems to no longer have what this level requires, and hopefully Hannant will be back to give us that extra go forward.
I would also definitely drop McQueen (who btw did nothing wrong, but added too little), for someone who can hit hard and who can run with purpose like Papalii. Keep Gillett and Te'o as well, who did a pretty good job in their spells.
Nothing of what I saw tonight makes me doubt we'll be celebrating 8 in a row!
