Queensland 38-10 New South Wales
A send off for New South Wales in the 8th minute following a dangerous tackle on Queensland’s Reece Walsh by New South Wales’s Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i ensured Queensland dominated Game 1 of State Of Origin 2024 to lead the series 1-0.
State Of Origin 2024 begun with Brisbane’s Story and Victoria Bridges, City Hall, the Tropical Dome & Reddacliff Place sculptures all lit up maroon from sunset at 5:01pm. The Sydney Harbour Bridge was also illuminated blue but for only 15 minutes from 5:45pm, before ‘flagship’ Sydney Spectacular, Vivid Sydney, started at 6pm. Also at that time, at Sydney’s Stadium Australia, the venue for Game 1 of State Of Origin 2024, an Under-15’s New South Wales RISE Boys exhibition rugby league match between Sky Blues & Navy Blues was held. Navy Blues won 40-4. At 7:15pm, the coin toss for the main match was held. New South Wales called it correctly & chose to kick off. Then, at 7:30pm, a New South Wales Blues flag display & marching band performed on the field before a light & pyrotechnic show got the main game ball brought out by 7-time surfing World Champion, Layne Beachley, who was greeted by a Blue Heeler. New South Wales Origin greats, Paul Gallen, Trent Hodkinson & Josh Reynolds, then brought the State Of Origin shield out onto the ground. The Final Countdown by Europe then played to a light show before the team line-ups were introduced to the crowd via the screens around the stadium.
The New South Wales side then walked from their Centre Of Excellence across the road through the former athlete transfer tunnel from The Games of the XXVIIth Olympiad: Sydney 2000 to Stadium Australia where they ran past flame signs saying ‘NSW’ & through a banner, where they met the Queensland side on the field, who came from the stadium’s changing rooms. The customary Welcome To Country, conducted this match by Savannah Flynn, and performance of the National Anthem, performed this match with guitar by Australian Idol 2024 winner, Dylan Wright, then followed before a countdown on the big screens signalled the approach to kick-off.
Anyway, to the game. It started just under 4 minutes late. Queensland opened the scoring with a converted try in the 4th minute by Ben Hunt. 3 minutes later, Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i dangerously tackled Reece Walsh, knocking him clean out. Reece Walsh didn’t have the ball at the time of the tackle, having just passed it after been in possession of it only momentarily. Reece Walsh was immediately found by sideline doctors to be suffering from Category 1 symptoms of a head injury, resulting in him being immediately ruled out from the rest of the match. Once his condition improved, he was later formally interchanged & Queensland’s brought into the interchange their 18th man. The referee had significant decisions to make too, producing a shock, though unsurprisingly given how the tackle was played even if the outcome was accidental. He sent off Joseph-Aukuso Sua’ali’i for the entire match, only the 6th time to ever happen in a State Of Origin match, the 3rd in a year & the fastest ever in State Of Origin history, beating the previous record by just over 50 minutes. New South Wales was now down a man. Queensland were also awarded a penalty goal as a result, which was kicked by Valentine Holmes, expanding Queensland’s lead by 2 points.
5 minutes later, a kick from Jerome Luai across the field under the Queensland defence allowed James Tedesco to find a gap to ground the unpossessed ball over the tryline to open New South Wales’s account in the 2024 series. His try was converted, narrowing Queensland’s lead to just 2 points. There was hope for New South Wales but over the next 10 minutes, every 5 minutes, Queensland easily found massive holes in New South Wales’s defence (being a man down doesn’t help) allowing Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow to score 2 easy tries, expanding the lead to 14 points. The rest of the half was uneventful apart from the announcement that Reece Walsh had passed a head injury assessment but as he was initially suffering Category 1 symptoms, renewed play on the field is not risked so he stayed in the dressing rooms. At half-time, the score was 20-6 in favour of Queensland.
During half-time, a Little Origin match was held.
New South Wales went in the 2nd half putting the send-off behind them. This attitude initially paid dividends when Zac Lomax reached for the heavens to score an unconverted try just 3 minutes into the half. Despite the missed conversion, New South Wales had renewed hope, with their deficit reduced to 10 points. They were now in total commitment for 23 minutes despite being unable to find the tryline & Queensland having 2 try attempts being ruled ‘No Try’ during that time period. Then the straw that broke the camel’s back: New South Wales’ defence barely held onto Ben Hunt, who ran the final 20 metres to score a converted try for Queensland in the 66th minute. This was followed in the next 13 minutes with 2 more converted tries, 1 from Xavier Coates, who leaped for the boundary, after Daly Cherry-Evans kicked the ball 25 metres out, to score before the ball went dead and a 3rd from Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow, running 20 metres from the tryline after Queensland broke through theoretically a 1-man defence from New South Wales, giving him a hat-trick & Queensland the win in Game 1 of the 3-game series.
All successful conversions were kicked by Valentine Holmes for Queensland & Nicholas Hynes for New South Wales.
The final score was Queensland 38-10 New South Wales, in front of a crowd of 77,214. It was Queensland’s biggest victory ever in Sydney. Player of the match was Daly Cherry-Evans. Queensland is now just 1 win away from a 2024 series victory. The Story Bridge in Brisbane shone maroon the rest of the night.
Yeah, (pretty had to recover from that) playing at this level, uhm, playing with 12.
I thought ‘You know, we put ourselves actually in positions at times where, you know, we were quite dominant but, um, I guess, you know, fatigue comes in at some stage but, uh, you know, playing along the game then, you know, when you’re playing sort of with a man down, it’s, uh, you got to sort of really try and bury the opposition into the corners and, you know, fatigue finds you at some stage, um, but, you know, I am actually really super proud of their efforts if I say’. Look, individuals are out on their feet, um, yeah, so, it, it made it a bit tough but, you know, 1 thing I do know about this, this group: They’ve really shifted the dime on where they see & how hard they want to work, uh, for the jersey so that’s something there that we will, you know, continue to push going forward.
Michael Maguire, New South Wales Blues coach
The team’s adapted to adversity the last 3 years. Um, you know you think back to last year, you know, Adelaide. We, we had both our wingers go off the field. We had centres playing in on, on the wing. We had, you know, David Fifita playing in the centres. Ben Hunt was playing in the centres. The team’s been accustomed to adapt to adversity & um, that’s no different to tonight. Um, you know, I thought ‘Hammer’ (Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow) was great just slipping back into that fullback position & everyone else. Felise Kaufusi came on the field and done a great job, you know.
His (Daly Cherry-Evans) preparation for his team was great & uh, we have got so much room. We have got so much to go with our footy. Uh, I thought we were so far off with our footy tonight, um, but that’s, that’s all to come.
Billy Slater, Queensland Maroons coach
Game 2 will be held at the Melbourne Cricket Ground on Wednesday, June 26 at 8:05pm AEST & Game 2 of an expanded 3-game Women’s State Of Origin, which New South Wales is leading, is tomorrow (Thursday 6th June) at 7:45pm at Hunter Stadium.
Sydney Spectaculars 