Qld played the better footy but I wonder what NSW did in camp all week. It took the best part of an hour for them to put together some decent cohesive attack. The DCE try was borderline but the defence off the scrum was abysmal. He jogged over running one out. Not excuse for that. The 6 point gift along with only playing 20 minutes of football was always going to be too much. Wouldn’t expect a lot of changes for game 2. Latrell in if he’s fit, and maybe 1-2 hard working forwards. Considering how poor we were tonight we probably should have lost by a lot more than we did. Some fine tuning and go again in a few weeks.
That's the thing, isn't it?
Munster and Holmes were excellent, Cleary/ Luai were largely rudderless, Qld showed real grind in defence and NSW were pedestrian for at least 30 minutes of that game- especially after the DCE try.
Combine all this plus the tries allowed/ disallowed and it still came down to just 6 points with NSW right on their try line at the final hooter.
This isn't taking anything away from Qld. They showed grit (especially in defence) and there's a few young players in their squad who could become mainstays. But I'm actually feeling less concerned right now than I did after going 1-0 down in 2019, for whatever reason that may be. You could rarely accuse a Freddy coached NSW of lacking intensity or purpose, I'd be surprised to see it twice in the same series.