Honeysett wrote:
We haven't had 10 years of this because of that reason. We have because QLD have absolutely amazing players and they've stuck with them.
Yes we've made selection mistakes but Josh Reynolds isn't one of them. Pearce is one of them and you've said you would rather him in the side than Josh Reynolds which is mental.
Pearce and Ennis are two players proven that they're not up for Origin.
Origin is about moments, win the momentum, win the moments, win the game. It's simple. Your halves just need to get repeat sets and give their players enough ball, that's it.
The QLD selectors have never had a selection headache before because they have players that are outstanding together, they've played series after series together. 3 of the 4 in the spine play week in and week out with each other. The benefits of routing the salary cap and keeping your core. They don't make mistakes because there isn't any to make until their players start to retire.
No question Qld have had amazing players, but if we had of got our selection right a few times, I'm confident we wouldn't have lost 8 straight, and far too often the line trotted out when we have made those mistakes is "oh, he is an Origin type" or "he has some mongrel about him" when if we'd picked our best team, that is our most skilled players in their best position and provided balance in our pack as opposed to selecting 6 so called "ball playing backrowers" that all played exactly the same way, we might not have won the majority, but I reckon we would have won a couple of series where we had home ground advantage for 2 games.
No two series were ballsed up as much as 2011 and 2012. 2011 bought us Dean Young!! Seriously, how many times did we here this guy was "made" for Origin. Only problem was, he was a run of the mill clubman, and throw in Jason King as our starting peop in game 1! and whilst we are at it, let's leave Hayne out all together in game one and play him on the wing in game 2 and in the centres in game 3. Top effort Ricky and Selectors.
Then in 2012, we get the mighty Jamie Burhrer from the bench, fuck me dead, the team was actually not that bad, even though we Had Hayne languishing on the wing, but Buhrer, another one of these plodding grinders who are good club men but please, Origin. We'd finally got our shit together and picked Farah. Carney got a chance outside Pearce and they went pretty well. And then we come out and win game two when ricky picked a really balanced pack even with Uate having a shocker, but the rest of the backline going really well. So he makes a couple of tough calls for game 3. He drops Uate, fair enough and the logical replacement was Brett Morris to partner his brother on the right side to minimise the disruption, because Hayne and Jennings were really starting to click on the left aside, so all he needed was one tweak to the right side, but what does he do, he fuckings switches Hayne to the right, where he now has to form A new combo with JMoz, and BMoz comes in and has to form a combo with Jennings on the left, and the backline for game three all of a sudden is basically a completely new one. To top it off, Glenn Stewart can't play through injury, so Lewis , a player with good attacking skills, decent passing game, a not totally dissimilar game to Stewart, who has been one of the best for NSW all series,who you would think comes back into the starting side for game three, gets left on the bench for the first 60 minutes of the game. Beau Scott, who wasn't good enough for the team for the first two games,who couldn't be MORE different than Stewart, gets selected and starts and plays that first 60 minutes and Merrin, has been solid enough off the bench in game one and two gets dropped altogether.
What happens, we lose by a point and people think Ricky has found the formula!!! No fucking way!!! Those simple selection errors in. My humble opinion where clearly worth at least a point and in my view cost us the series, they weren't the reason we got so close in that series.
Yep, we don't have the cattle In the halves, I agree, but some seriously stupid decision making has cost us more than 1 series, of that I have no doubt.
Home
