Who are you cheering on this year? Blues or Maroons?

Not confident of Qld winning the first game. But believe they will win the next two.

Brave effort by the NSW team. But the Qld team will be banging the NSW team's wives tonight. It would be a big difference if 13 players were playing for NSW tonight.

Redmond Neck wrote on Jun 6^th, 2024 at 6:34am:


Not sure - it wasn't a good tackle.

Think the problem was a nutter coach selecting a very young player and then spending a week pushing aggression. Walsh got very low which didn't help. Didn't think it was too late the defender was committed without a view of when the ball left possession.

Pretty unlucky the NSW player was sent off for lining up the opposition player at 'chest' height, only for the QLD player to fall back (and downward) in his passing, which resulted in the contact becoming 'head high'.

In Mt Druitt when playing League. We were taught that if one of our players gets sent off and we are a man or two down (which in Mt Druitt, players being sent off was common) - the only way to compete and possibly win is to just pump it hard up as a team of forwards as its impossible to win it out wide with less number of players.
This 'often' worked as besides the opposition becoming 'over-confident' and being a player or two more - it also takes them by surprise when our focus is to play the ball fast and just 'hammer' their forwards with constant forward thrusting (backs/wingers also chime in) attacking.
Before long - the breaks appear, their 'wall' collapses and we're scoring right up the middle.

This is the 'only' real way to beat the opposition when down players. To run at them like 'Dwarven' Warriors hard and fast straight up and eventually break and over-run their forwards while the backs are just twiddling their thumbs.

League is a 'Defensive' game - it's all about 'breaking the line' and if you look back at all the State of Origin games. The team with the best attacking 'pack' dominates and the backs just capitalise.
If you don't have the superior 'Forward' Play and pack - you won't win the series.
Simple as that.

Jasin wrote on Jun 7^th, 2024 at 1:28pm:


The NSW player could have gone lower, given that Walsh was slipping in the play. Even if Walsh was fully upright, Joey was so high off the ground after hitting Walsh that it would have likely been a high tackle anyway.

Qld will have to get rid of Walsh for game 3. Tabuai-Fidow to fullback. Cobbo in the centres. Then we will see a much better team.

I have not watched the replay of last night's game. But it seems that Qld were disgusting in the first half.

Just spoke to a guy in town who's working for the NSW League (all over his ute) and told him it was the first 40 minutes of any Rugby League that I've ever seen that was basically flawless.
I've never seen a more dominant and near perfect performance in all my years of watching that game.
I don't think I'll ever see anything in the game better that 40 minutes. It was like hitting the ball in the sweet spot of the racquet or bat.
QLD are good - so it wasn't like watching a match like Australia v some obscure backwater nation to win 100-0.

QLD may have won the most series (wars), but NSW really does put on the best Battles (matches).

UnSubRocky wrote on Jun 28^th, 2024 at 1:41pm:



Qld didn't keep NSW at anything. NSW were so far ahead they didn't care if Qld scored one or two any more.

Great game.  Well done to the blues.  They deserved the win.

As far as I am concerned Reese Walsh has played his last game of State of Origin for Qld for quite some time. He let in the two NSW tries. His run down field was commendable. But not much came of it. And his covering tackle to prevent a try in the dying minutes was only enough to give him a moderate rating.

Unless he stars for the Broncos in whatever is left of the season and the Broncos go on to be in the finals, Walsh should be left out of the 2025 Qld State of Origin side.