Last night shows some of the selections were poor, and it starts with some of the forwards selected, fact is some of them just are not up to Origin standard in my book.
Reece Robson? Really?! You're telling me he's the 3rd best option for NSW at hooker behind Apiu and Cook? Sorry but he is poor in my book. His defence is solid but dummy half skills were rubbish.
Hudson Young. "Homer" may go alright in some games for the Raiders, but in 2 games has done SFA on the positive side. Everyone kept talking him up in the media as "built for Origin" but that seemed to be more for niggle. Ill discipline in Game 1, and general lack of effort in defence just grinds my gears. You only have to look at what occurred in Game 1 when he went off so Liam Martin could some on and NSW looked much better. Sorry not my cup of tea.
Then the piesta-resistance Utoikamanu. Pick a rookie first grader who no-one has heard of, who was not setting the world on fire in club land, for the team running stone motherless last, and then only use him for 14 minutes. Sorry I don't care how much Freddy knew him from U19s Origin, he should never have been picked in the first place. The fact that, down to 16 players after Turbo got injured he only played 14 minutes defies belief as it just meant the remaining 15 players had to play longer minutes, thus fatiguing them, which when you had 2 other forwards who had limited training due to injuries, meant they were running out of gas in the second half. Just mind blowingly stupid.
Then outside of Haas, Martin and Murray at times, the effort from the forwards just was not there. They didn't go that extra mile. Regardless of some of the b/s that Qld carry on with, they will make that extra effort in Origin even when they are down by a lot on the scoreboard.
(IIRC) Phil Gould some years back had a clip of Shane Webcke chasing down a break made by a NSW player, stopping a try being scored in the 78th minute of the game when NSW were ahead by some 20 odd points and Qld were no hope of winning. He used that in Origin camps as an example of the effort you have to come up with to beat Qld - and our forwards as a group just don't do that.
Until we get the right forwards, doing the right job, with the right mindset instilled, it wouldn't matter if we had the second coming of Clive Churchill at fullback, Brett Kenny at five eight, Peter Sterling at halfback and Ian Walsh at hooker as the NSW spine as they would not get the space and room to move without the forwards doing the hard yards in hitting the ball up.
I think we all can agree that in both games, regardless of injury, Freddy's interchange tactics in each game have been poor.