State of Origin:

Brad Fittler told his NSW players that this was just another game of rugby league. He was only kidding. Even from a distance something didn’t look normal, and it wasn’t the abundance of Darren Lockyer’s hair. It wasn’t Cameron Smith running the show from the commentary box rather than midfield. Nor was it the altered optics of a rectangular football match swimming in the broad parabolas of the Melbourne Cricket Ground.

Nor that the jersey sponsors were a law firm and a super fund, nor that the jerseys themselves appeared to have been painted onto the players. Was this the known world of rugby league at all?

The intrigue surrounding this match resided in the team selections. NSW had dumped a defeated generation, while Queensland’s familiar winners had departed, mostly, by choice. Each State presented newness, a mystery box. Not a single person knew what was inside.

Soon, the rhythms of league as we know it asserted themselves. The back-and-forth, the probing, the rubber band of each defensive line stretching without quite breaking. There were worries that those disruptors, the referees, would also assert themselves as they had during the NRL season, but their games were suitably anonymous.

This being Origin, fatigue entered earlier and more decisively than in weekly NRL fixtures. For the first four minutes, the Blues looked beaten. For the next twenty, Queensland did. An opportunistic dash by Damien Cook set up a try for the dashing, dancing James Tedesco, and the forecasts of NSW’S speed blitz were being borne out.

But then, as ever, just as neutrals were feeling sorry for Queensland an intercept and length-of-the-field try to Valentine Holmes altered the score and the momentum. It was Queensland who finished the first half the fresher. Here we go, and there they went.

Origin football is played at such a high level of skill and intensity that mistakes are weightier than usual. A James Maloney forward pass early in the second half gave Queensland the ball, and soon after the lead. But it was a mistake at the other end that tilted the balance.