Queensland 32-6 New South Wales
A dominant Queensland side scored 6 tries to achieve ultimate victory in Game 2 of State Of Origin 2023 to secure the Shield.
The event begun just over 2 hours prior to kick-off, at 6pm, with an exhibition Queensland RISE Academy under-14’s men’s rugby league match between RISE Maroon & RISE Silver. These teams are based on the Sunshine Coast where the Academy, open to boys and girls, aims to give players the tools to reach their potential. RISE Silver won 12-4.
Then at 7:30pm, the pre-match entertainment began. Indigenous performances & a light and pyrotechnic show featuring Aussie legend, Shannon Noll, featured (though the Indigenous performances only featured in the broadcast background & Shannon Noll, not at all). QLD Origin greats, Wally Lewis & Darren Lockyer concluded the pre-match entertainment by bringing out the State Of Origin shield, accompanied by junior rugby league players from both states, onto the ground for the stadium crowd of 52,433 and the multi-million sized TV audience.
The Nine Network again showed the team line-ups with pre-recorded footage of the respective states’ iconic bridges in the background lit up in their team’s colours, complete with computer-generated fireworks. The Story Bridge lit up maroon complete was shown again later.
A surprise drone show on Brisbane’s Southbank Parklands near the Victoria Bridge featured in the lead-up to the match, broadcast on TV on delay (so it happened before 8pm), It featured 3 sequences. First, was the words ‘STATE OF ORIGIN’, with the latter word in maroon and the 2 former words in blue, above a italised ‘2‘. in the colours of green & orange. Second, was a blue rugby league ball flying in between the game’s goalposts, orange in colour with a white ‘dot’, planted on a strip of grass. And lastly, the chant of QLD pride, ‘QUEENSLANDER!’ in plain white.
The customary Welcome To Country, conducted by Ashley Ruska and performance of the National Anthem, sung by Amy Lehpamer, then immediately preceded the main match,
Anyway, to the game. Disaster at the start for NSW. Tom Trobojevic sustained a pectoral injury a few minutes into the game, ruling him out for the rest of the match.
Up until the 8th minute of the match, when the first try was given, the Premiers of both states had not resumed ‘The Bet’, so the Sydney Harbour Bridge will not be lit maroon for at least 35 minutes on Friday 14th of July 2023 despite losing the series. This may a result of the NSW Election held on 25 March. Since the election, the new Premier, Chris Minns, has been reluctant to lit up the Sydney Opera House for significant occasions due to cost & over-use (the latter we tend to agree with). It would not be a surprise if his policy has been applied to the Sydney Harbour Bridge too.
So it looks like ‘The Bet’ was a 1-year wonder under NSW Premier Dominic Perrottet (QLD Premier Annastacia Palaszczuk has been taunting NSW into ‘The Bet’ for years but did not follow through on it when NSW won) who has been the only NSW Premier to follow through on the bet if the state lost. As you can tell above, he lost the election 8 months later – coincidence? Probably…maybe.
However, ‘The Bet’, despite no-one following through on it until 2022, has been called off before. In 2020, ‘The Bet’ did not occur due to diplomatic tensions between the Premiers during the early months of the COVID-19 pandemic. However, tensions are only sporting this year, so it looks at this stage to be a new NSW policy under Chris Minns to not do ‘The Bet’. This may mean ‘The Bet’ may not occur again or at the earliest, 2027.
Anyway, bank to the game. It was a fairly even first half despite 2 controversial tries. An unconverted try by Valentine Holmes was declared by The Bunker for Queensland in the 8th minute despite near universal opinion it could not be considered a try. Even the QLD team thought it wasn’t a try! It may have met the definition of having “downward pressure”, but Holmes clearly didn’t have a grip on the ball. In the 33rd minute, Murray Taulagi also scored a converted try, which was cleared by the on-field referees & The Bunker, even though the sequence of passes, from the TV coverage, seemed to begin with a forward pass & end with 2 consecutive forward passes. At half-time, the score was 10-0 in favour of Queensland.
During half-time, a Little Origin match was held between Burrowes State School & Morayfield East State School.
Queenland turned it up a notch in the 2nd half, outplaying New South Wales frequently. There’s no controversies regarding the tries in the 2nd half. Queensland scored a converted try first in the 44th minute by Valentine Holmes. New South Wales’ Payne Haas assumed the ball would bounce in his favour in the 50th minute & when it didn’t, it allowed Queensland’s Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow to follow through with a clear path to the try line to score a unconverted try, seemingly sealing the victory for Queensland. A faint glimmer of hope appeared for New South Wales when Damien Cook found a flaw in Queensland’s defence in the 57th minute & took the opportunity to score New South Wales’s only try, which was converted. It was just a mistake on Queensland’s part as they responded with conviction with 2 more converted tries as New South Wales fell asleep. Xavier Coates scored in the 64th minute, to again seal the victory, while Jeremiah Nanai took advantage of a free ball laying beyond the try line after a collision in mid-air between 2 New South Welshmen (Josh Addo-Carr & Damien Cook, the latter had catched the ball just prior to the collison) to not just celebrate the victory but to confirm it.
It was pain in New South Wales’ wounds. New South Wales were making crucial unlucky errors like passing the ball out of play & tactical errors like letting themselves being tackled on the last tackle and thus, losing possession & any possible field gains.
Then with 22 seconds to go, an argument broke out between the 2 sides as the players grabbed each other’s collars. New South Wales’s Josh Addo-Carr was spotted by the referees throwing a punch and was promptly sent to the sin-bin for the remainder of the match. His teammate, Jarome Luai & Queensland’s Reece Walsh were found, in the slow motion television replays, to be headbutting each other, twice by the latter while the former had the most powerful. Both were sent off for the remainder of the match.
The final score was Queensland 32-6 New South Wales.
All successful conversions were kicked by Valentine Holmes for Queensland & Stephen Crichton for New South Wales.
Lindsay Collins was player of the match.
Proud’s an understatement. This group of players… just, just keep raising the bar & we have seen some great Queensland victories & great Queensland performances, but the adversity – and different adversity this time, um, that come from the opposition. You know they, they applied the pressure in that 1st half & you know, we were defending our try line. Um, they would make line breaks & we’d come up with some big plays including the one from the guy (Daly-Cheery Evans) sitting next to me & and then, the 12 other Queenslanders backed him up and got back there & defended their try line & there’s no excuses in this team. There’s no, there’s no, worrying about what’s just happened. It’s, it’s just about getting on with the job and um, being resilient & that’s what the people of Queensland do so we try & reflect that.
Queensland coach, Billy Slater.
I thought at the end of the game, when I looked at the score & I thought “Wow!”, you know like… It’s a sign our opponent was a good team because I didn’t think we were that far out of the game & we got beat by, you know, 4 or 5 tries so yeah for the, you know, outside the moments that they, you know, scored the tries, I thought we competed & we fought hard & I was happy with the rest of it – just couldn’t save the tries & weren’t good enough to convert our opportunities.
New South Wales coach, Brad Fittler.
The question now is can Queensland win the 1st whitewash (3-0 series victory) since 2010?
Game 3 will be held at Sydney’s Stadium Australia on Wednesday, July 12 at 8:05pm AEST & the deciding finale – with a current 8-point difference – of an expanded 2-game Women’s State Of Origin is tomorrow at 7:45pm at North Queensland Stadium in Townsville.
Sydney Spectaculars 