Pearce’s time to shine in Origin and for Roos, declares mentor Johns
Let the Mitchell Pearce era begin.
That’s the call from NSW great Andrew Johns as the oft-maligned Blues No 7 stands on the brink of finally breaking through as a State of Origin series winner in tonight’s game two at ANZ Stadium in Sydney.
In recent times Johns, Darren Lockyer, Johnathan Thurston and Cooper Cronk have enjoyed a standing as the game’s dominant playmakers.
And Johns said Pearce was now ready to join that elite company and stake his claim to wear the Kangaroos No 7 jersey as Thurston and Cronk wind down.
“I think it’s Mitch’s time for sure,” Johns said yesterday. “I watch the way he plays at the Roosters, the way the game plan at NSW is built around him and James Maloney. It’s his time and it’s exciting for him.”
Pearce will tonight surpass Johns for the most number of games in a NSW halves jumper with his 17th Origin.
He has never won a series in his six previous attempts, with Thurston in 2015 famously sledging him onfield that the closest he would ever get to the Origin trophy was if he took a photo with the Wally Lewis statue outside Suncorp Stadium in Brisbane.
Johns, who mentors Pearce at the Sydney Roosters, said he’d been made a scapegoat during his career, having been thrown into the Origin cauldron too young as a 19-year-old in 2008. “He got his opportunity too young. They threw him to the wolves,” Johns said.
With Thurston to retire from representative football after the Rugby League World Cup later this year and Cronk’s playing future uncertain, Johns said Pearce was next in line to be the game’s dominant half and the Australian No 7.