No one can overcome my kiss of death – not even the mighty Maroons (2024)

Serves me right for being a smart-arse.

An hour before kick-off in Origin II, I begged leave of my editor to file early so that I could have an early night. My suggested column in its entirety:

Another huge disappointment

By Peter FitzSimons

NSW lost, and Latrell didn’t live up to the hype.

Wake me up when September comes.

The end.

It, ummmm, didn’t turn out like that.

My only defence is that not only did I not see the Blue avalanche coming, no one else seemed to either. After all, this was an already rampant Queensland, up against a Blues team smashed in Sydney! Everyone knew that the series was already over from the moment that Joseph Suaalii was sent off in Origin I, and NSW was destroyed from there. We all knew that the most important person in the Queensland side was the bus driver, and if they could get them to the MCG on time, it was game over!

Who could possibly have foreseen that at the end of the first half of Origin II, NSW would be leading 34-0, with Queensland exceedingly lucky to get to nil! Who knew that NSW would open the batting and proceed to belt sixes and fours through the covers with gay abandon for the next 40 minutes, all while bowling out the Maroons for zippity-do-da?

Who could pick that for the entire first half the Maroons would be marooned under their own goal posts with not the slightest capacity to get out, and that instead of their traditional rosy-red cheeks of coming triumph at the halfway point of the whole series, they would be displaying red cheeks of embarrassment throughout – at least keeping things colour co-ordinated, so that was something.

And yes, because this was Queensland – because of the mythology they have built up over the years – there remained a sneaking fear that they must burst from their first-half coffin and start to box Blues ears together for the next 40 minutes. And sure enough, they indeed came back well, managing to poke three Maroon flags up through the surface of the Blues avalanche, to mark where they lay buried.

“NSW need to bounce back from here,” Brad Fittler deadpanned, after the first Maroons try, with the margin now narrowed to just 28 points. In the end, the NSW margin of 20 points and the score of 38-18 vastly flattered the Queenslanders.

For a match report, one could, of course, do the usual and go through with a rough description of each try, but what would be the point? This massive and historic victory was not built on the sum parts of individual Blues’ brilliance. It was first and foremost a massive team effort, albeit guided by one particularly outstanding performance that unleashed everyone else.

I am talking about Mitchell Moses, the 29-year-old who has been the “next big thing,” for a decade or so, but on this night really was a very big thing. For much of the game, he was nothing less than the NRL’s answer to the NFL’s greatest quarterback, Tom Brady. For, just like the famed American’s capacity to throw the ball so accurately he could knock the cigarette out of a passing sparrow’s mouth, so too was Moses extraordinary for his ability to guide his team into the Promised Land on this night, albeit with his foot! Time and again, Moses was able to kick the ball with such devastating skill, in grubbers on the ground and more particularly in the air, that the Queenslanders were left flat-footed as Blues leapt high above them to retrieve it and score, or streamed past them to regather and score.

The exemplar was what happened 23 minutes into the first half. Moses gathers the ball from broken play and spies Zac Lomax far out to his right. With at least half-a-second left before the defence closes, he kicks the ball 30 metres on the fly, so perfectly timed and placed that all Lomax had to do was to leap like Buddy Franklin on a good night, high above Maroons winger Murray Taulagi, and bring it down for a superb try.

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And that is not even counting Moses’ passing game. When Andrew Johns says you’ve had “a game and a half” and exults endlessly about how clever your passes are, you know you’ve had a beauty.

All up, it was a great result, for Moses, for NSW, for the series.

Friends, for rugby league.

I shall try another smart-arse pre-match report before Origin III, predicting a great Queensland victory to give them a Kiss of Death for that one, too. But, in all honesty, I am not sure if I can manage it, if Moses is playing.

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