No one can overcome my kiss of death – not even the mighty Maroons

An hour before kick-off in Origin II, I begged leave of my editor to file early so that I could have an early night. My suggested column in its entirety:Wake me up when September comes.My only defence is that not only did I not see the Blue avalanche coming,else seemed to either.

And yes, because this was Queensland – because of the mythology they have built up over the years – there remained a sneaking fear that they must burst from their first-half coffin and start to box Blues ears together for the next 40 minutes. And sure enough, they indeed came back well, managing to poke three Maroon flags up through the surface of the Blues avalanche, to mark where they lay buried.

“NSW need to bounce back from here,” Brad Fittler deadpanned, after the first Maroons try, with the margin now narrowed to just 28 points. In the end, the NSW margin of 20 points and the score of 38-18 vastly flattered the Queenslanders. For a match report, one could, of course, do the usual and go through with a rough description of each try, but what would be the point? This massive and historic victory was not built on the sum parts of individual Blues’ brilliance. It was first and foremost a massiveeffort, albeit guided by one particularly outstanding performance that unleashed everyone else.

The exemplar was what happened 23 minutes into the first half. Moses gathers the ball from broken play and spies Zac Lomax far out to his right. With at least half-a-second left before the defence closes, he kicks the ball 30 metres on the fly, so perfectly timed and placed that all Lomax had to do was to leap like Buddy Franklin on a good night, high above Maroons winger Murray Taulagi, and bring it down for a superb try.And that is not even counting Moses’ passing game.

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