Queensland is going to win the Origin series at Suncorp Stadium on Wednesday night. Everyone is in agreement with that, right? Everyone except Brad Fittler, his team and the Blues’ dwindling band of supporters I mean – with ‘dwindling’ being the operative word.
 
Can you believe the way the good folk of NSW turned on their players, coach and selectors after Game 1? Admittedly it was a pretty poor performance over there in that renowned heartland of rugby league, South Australia, but if any Queenslanders reacted that way after a Maroons loss, they’d be told to hand in their King Wally collector cards and be pitchforked across the Tweed, never to return. Not that it would ever happen. Even at their lowest ebb Maroons supporters still have faith that their team can produce a miracle.
 
Which, of course, is what the Blues will need if they are to pull off the mother of all upsets on Wednesday night. Missing their playmaker Nathan Cleary and wildcard Latrell Mitchell, fielding a couple of walking wounded and coming off a loss that could only be described as embarrassing, their chances hover somewhere between slim and none. Add in the fact that the match is being played at a sold-out Suncorp Stadium in front of the best part of 50,000 rabid Queenslanders baying for points, and even those odds look generous.
 
Matter of fact, no-one in the Maroons camp would ever mention it, but this series is shaping up as Queensland’s best chance of snaring their first elusive three-nil clean sweep since 2010 when, incidentally, they won Game II at Suncorp Stadium 34-6 before heading to Sydney for the coup de gras.
 
The southern media is clinging to hope though. In their desperate efforts to find positive angles for the mountains of press copy they are obliged to churn out in the lead-up to the game, two beauties have emerged. The first is the statistic that since Fittler took over as coach in 2018, every time the Blues have lost the first game of the series, as they did in 2019, 2020 and 2022, they have bounced back and won Game II. To which all I can say is, that’s going to need to be some bounce to happen this time around.
 
The other straw that one NSW reporter clutched at over the weekend was to suggest that the furore over Ben Hunt’s future at the Dragons would prove a distraction in the Maroons’ camp. Ah yes, the old ‘distraction in the camp’ angle. I can just see it now, Queensland coach Billy Slater walking up to a group of his forwards who are sitting in foyer of the team hotel, looking distracted.
 
‘What’s up boys?’ he says. ‘You seem distracted.’
 
‘We are distracted coach,’ replies Lindsay Collins. ‘Very distracted. It’s this Ben Hunt contract business. It’s proving a distraction. We just can’t concentrate on the game.’
 
Or not.
 
No, I’m sorry. Much as the NSW coaches, players and press are trying to put on a brave face, it would need a monumental, backs-to-the-wall, against all odds, do it for your mate-do it for your State, blood and guts-type performance to square the series on Wednesday night, and Origin history has shown us there’s only one team renowned for that kind of effort.
 
And they don’t wear blue.