The better team on the night won. The best player on the field wore a blue jersey – Jarrod Hayne. The second best player on the field wore a blue jersey – the slightly less ugly Morris twin. DCE learnt the hard way that SOO is totally different to any club game whereas the “inexperienced” blues halves handled it well
Its hard to see how it all went so wrong after the quick fire start but you cant totally discount complacency. You still thought with 5 minutes to go they were going to pull off another miraculous win but the defense held and the attack lacked imagination
Billy S was our best which says a lot. You need Thurston or Smith to be the standouts up front for the team to dominate. Smith seemed injured for last half and Thurston didnt have room to move because the forwards failed to get on top. Parker was disappointing and didnt get his usual handoffs working. None of the forwards stood out – in attack at least. Tate was reliable as ever and Boyd is the consumate finisher but Inglis as usual in these big games goes missing. Sam Thaiday was sorely missed and should come back in for next one naturally for Guerra. Qld are big on loyalty but McQueen should be replaced by Josh Maguire .STAT
Still QLD could have and should have won with the number of chances they had in the latter periods. Gillett bombed a certain try. Their only plan to score was to get it out to Boyd but the Blues had a great defensive winger this time around. DCE had no ideas. Cronks loss was big structure wise but most people would have thought how lucky we were to have DCE to fill in. He was found wanting in most areas.
Hayne should not have scored but the guy has an almost Wally like presence about him in these big games. For once the bounce of the ball went NSW way – and it often doesnt. So good luck to them. You cant hate Loz – he isnt Carlos Smierson or Gus after all. It aint over yet and QLD know what they have to do – if Blues can do it at Suncorp then there is no excuse not to win in Sydney
Qld were always good winners and to be fair NSW were good losers. Lets hope they dont become bad winners as previously. Of course we will have to put up with the raving about the dawn of a new era by the heavily biased NRL reporting media but this should work in our favour and get the boys’ minds back on the job.
flashman181 
Good write up Flashy. Yeah, it hurts to admit that the better team on the night was the winning team. It would’ve been wonderful to snatch victory at the end, but that wouldn’t have been a fair result. I must say that Cam Smith looked pretty average.
For me, the difference was the NSW defence (so aggressive and persistent) and Haynes.
As you say, here’s hoping for a turnaround and we win the next two!