Bellamy’s fingerprints as NSW Blues nail hit job on Harry Grant… and the clue it was coming

For maybe the only time in his coaching career, he never felt truly at ease.

Fifteen days is a long time in rugby league, let alone 15 years. While he sat mostly stony faced and emotionless in the back of the NSW coaching box at Suncorp Stadium on Wednesday night (at least when the cameras caught him), Bellamy is on the cusp of scratching that Origin itch.

It might not have been as headline-grabbing as Zac Lomax’s aerial prowess, Latrell Mitchell barely leaving his fingerprints on a pass to set up Brian To’o, or Connor Watson’s supreme strength to hurl the ball for Dylan Edwards’ match sealer, but there was a theme to NSW’s historic game one win: the hit job on Harry Grant.

Make no mistake, this is Laurie Daley’s NSW team. He deserves all the credit for this win, perhaps series defining, in a match which will never come near the annals of Origin classic.

But when he pitched to the NSW Rugby League board to replace Michael Maguire at the end of last year, he came with a secret weapon: Bellamy’s guarantee he would be his adviser. Everyone else applying was bringing a knife to a gun fight.

On his Big Sports Breakfast program on Monday, Daley waded into an area he usually avoids. He was asked an innocent question about how the Blues expected Queensland to use interchange star Tom Dearden, and whether it would be in tandem with starting No.9 Grant.

He ever so slightly peeled back the curtains on the Bluesprint.

“I don’t know how much Harry has done,” said Daley, referencing Grant’s injury-interrupted preparation, which restricted him to just 55 minutes of game time in six weeks before Origin I. “He’ll be a little bit underdone. If he’s making 50 to 60 tackles, he could be buggered.”

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That’s the appeal of Origin: one week Bellamy is putting his Melbourne captain in cotton wool on his return from a hamstring complaint, the next he’s part of a brains trust which put a moving target on arguably Queensland’s most influential player.

Of the tired and battered bodies which trudged from The Cauldron after game one, none looked more scarred than Grant. He kept throwing his body in front of giant NSW forwards, and by the time Queensland had the ball, the zip was out of his legs.

They challenged him at marker in defence, arrowed at him when he was close to the ruck, and stood Payne Haas two passes wide when Grant was scouting wider in the Maroons line.

By the time it got to 53 minutes, Queensland coach Slater had seen enough. He hooked Grant for Dearden, only sending him back into the game for the final five inconsequential minutes.

Grant’s numbers told a story: 43 tackles in just 59 minutes of field time. With a fuel tank lower than Peter Dutton’s approval ratings, he ran the ball just five times for 23 metres.

Job done.

It’s no great secret for a highly-skilled rugby league team to isolate a smaller man in the middle, but with not only Bellamy in the box, Penrith’s game managers have also curated a way to shackle Grant.

Like they did in last year’s grand final when they strangled the life out of the Storm and Grant (after he scored the first try) by forcing him to make 59 tackles, Nathan Cleary and Isaah Yeo pulled the right strings containing Grant.

Yeo was far more prevalent running the ball rather than distributing, a clear tactic to up Grant’s workload. If Grant had played all 80 minutes of Origin I and kept making tackles at the same rate, he would have just about equalled his tally from last year’s grand final.

But numbers only tell part of the story. Watch NSW’s three first-half tries.

The first, Grant rushed Cleary on a last tackle play, presumedly in the hope of pressuring the kick, but all it did was force Cleary to chance his hand on the last, shovelling the ball to Haas and then immediately stepping around Grant to take him out of play. Cleary touched the ball a second time in the sequence before it finally landed in Lomax’s hands for the opening try.

Two minutes later, Reece Robson and Haas forced Grant into error as he fumbled the ball with a rare run near the half-way line. Next set, NSW scored through Brian To’o.

Ceding momentum and field position, Grant’s next telling contribution was one borne by frustration and fatigue. He tried to con referee Ashley Klein by sneakily toeing the ball out of Lomax’s grasp as he attempted to play it. Penalty. Before Queensland could touch the ball again, Lomax had his second.

“That was probably the worst game I’ve seen Harry play,” Andrew Johns said on Channel Nine post game.

On Thursday, Bellamy will have Grant and the rest of his Queensland Storm disciples back at the club as they prepare for Saturday’s game on the Gold Coast.

It will be like Wednesday night never happened.

But after a long Origin hiatus, Bellamy is back helping Daley and the Blues – and it came with an almighty mission on one of his own.