Blues coach Laurie Daley marvelled at Payne Haas and Stephen Crichton’s ability to play an Origin off virtually no preparation as they inspired NSW to an 18-6 win.
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Crichton finished with 67 run metres, two tackle busts, a linebreak assist, a try assist and 15 tackles, while Haas had 140 metres, three tackle busts, three offloads and 29 tackles without a miss in a man-of-the-match display.
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Post match Daley revealed how close the pair came to not playing.
“He was in doubt, it was a pretty bad cork,” Daley said.
“But our physios did an amazing job all week with Payne and Crichton because Payne’s injury, we weren’t sure with that either.
“But they were patient with them. Payne I think, probably had not even half a session, a quarter of a session on the Monday. And we did nothing on the Tuesday so he hadn’t really trained.
“And then to push out the minutes and be strong the way he was great.
“Critter was fantastic. And I think the word that they said to me, Critter’s right to go because he said, they asked him this morning, how was he? And he said he was mad, so that’s obviously good.”
Daley was in awe of Haas for finishing as best on ground despite virtually no preparation on the training paddock.
“For a big bloke, limited prep like a 10-day prep with hardly any running because we had to make sure that he was right,” Daley said.
“To jump out of the ground and do what he did was inspirational actually.”
Daley was relieved more than happy with the performance of his side and feels they can be better in game two.
“I think relief, it was a brave performance. But anytime you come to Queensland and win you’re going to be extremely happy,” Daley said.
“It was sort of one of those games, like it was a slow ruck, so you had to go forward, you couldn’t move the ball, so you just had to run hard.
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“I was happy with aspects of our game. It was hard to get things on. Their line speed was exceptional. Very good. They control the ruck really well, so we’ve got areas that we can be better at.”
Daley was full of praise for Zac Lomax and Brian To’o after the pair combined for nearly 400 metres.
“He was great and we needed him to be particularly at the back of the field,” Daley said of Lomax.
“He and Brian, they did a fantastic job. They’re coming off limited games too, so they could have been underdone, but they just pushed and made the blue Jersey proud, which is what we wanted them to do.”
Daley praised his halves after Mitchell Moses and Nathan Cleary impressed as a pairing in their first game together.
“I thought they were great,” Daley said of his halves.
“Again first time they’ve played together. I’s difficult when you bring new people together but I thought they were terrific.
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“I thought Nathan really threatened with the ball. Mitch was good. Defensively they were both strong.
“That’s an underrated part of their game as well. Just for little blokes to just get in front and make the tackle on big blokes. It’s pretty impressive.”
However, one area of the Blues performance that was poor was their goal kicking, with just one penalty goal and four missed conversions, but Daley backed Cleary to bounce back.
“That’s Yeo’s job to get Nathan kicking,” Daley said.
“It’s a good day to have off, isn’t it? I don’t know Nathan that well because I haven’t worked with him but just to see the way that he prepares, I know that would be burning him and I know that he won’t be like that again so he’ll do whatever it takes. He’ll be right.”
A crucial turning point was To’o being sent to the sin bin for tackling Xavier Coates in the air, but Daley defended his winger.
“I think he went up to contest and then obviously in a split second, he’s had his hand on his shoulder,” Daley said.
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“If you slow anything down, you can turn it into whatever you want. But that’s the challenge you face when you come here.
“Our blokes were really good at half time about it. We handled it okay. Could have handled it a bit better. There were aspects of the second half that will be better at, but it was, what it was.”
Blues skipper Isaah Yeo echoed his coach’s sentiments that he was proud of the performance, but knows there is more in his side.
”That was certainly good. I was going to touch on this aura about it, but really there’s no better place to play, I don’t think, as much as Accor is our home stadium, but you get 50,000 here, the whole joint’s rocking, feels like it’s on top of you.
“So any time you can play up here is special, playing this arena special for your state, but then about our lead, it was really proud week.
“I certainly don’t take it for granted for sure, but I certainly just tried to just be myself throughout the whole thing.
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“But it was nice to come up here and particularly seeing how much we put into the whole week, the sort of conversation we had behind the scenes, the preparation wasn’t perfect, but I just felt we handled it really well and then to come up here and I thought our first half was exceptional.
“So the second half still probably a little bit of work on, probably took us a little bit too long to correct ourselves in certain areas.
“That’s what happens in Origin football. The swings of momentum and they could certainly feel it too when the tide had turned.
“So it’s some really big plays at big moments and then we’ll probably get in confidence out of that as well.”
Yeo praised his side for dealing with adversity and focusing on the task at hand.
“All I know is we do a really good job as a group, just internalising it and just worrying about the week ahead,” Yeo said.
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“So I felt we did that throughout the whole week. We weren’t worrying too much throughout the Wednesday.
“We just wanted to make sure every session was really good and I felt we did that. I felt we got better as the week went on with our sessions. It was obviously nice to come up here too because the weather was a bit better.
“We were running the pump there in NSW for a couple of days. But yeah, I’m just really proud of how it was just process driven.
“And you sort of get out in this environment, get out in the field today. And I was really pleased with the start. So that’s a big part in this arena. You know, the start’s important for both teams. And yeah, I felt we handled that well tonight.”
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