Chose not to run: The blueprint for NSW to win Origin II

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If you’re wondering if the NSW Blues have an Origin identity crisis, google “NSW Origin merchandise”.

The late and unlamented dark-blue jersey is there, but that’s just the start of it. There are dark-blue jerseys with light-blue vees, stripes and pipes, and vice versa. There are hoodies and beanies and stubbie holders in every shade of blue, many of them not quite blue.

Some are greyish, some are greenish, and if some are blue it’s only as a background contrast for a big red W, which stands for “Bank”. There’s an indigenous jersey which has many colours, one of them blue.

There are lots of tints and combos that seemed a good idea at the time. It’s like the merch has been designed by the NSW selectors. Watch out for a black jersey next, or a pink one for playing away.

You know where this is going. It’s going to “Qld Origin merchandise”. The jerseys are maroon. The hoodies, beanies, stubbie holders? Maroon on a maroon background. There’s an occasional tolerance for white piping, but the indigenous jersey is fifty shades of maroon. They may not know much, but they know what they are. Marooned.

It’s not often you see a rugby league “cultural problem” played out in public view. Normally, cultural problems are on CCTV or phone camera footage. In Origin, the NSW cultural problem is written on the scoreboard.

Cameron Murray and Nathan Cleary in one of NSW’s altered outfits.Credit: Getty

It emerges in the last ten minutes of games. It’s analysed in words in black and white (still not blue). NSW is a complicated state of mind that sometimes hates itself more than it hates Queensland. That at least makes one thing the states have in common.

Brad Fittler, like many before him, has attempted to solve the cultural problem. Usually, this has involved manufacturing some imitation of what comes naturally north of the border: bonding camps, bonding drinking sessions, bonding visits from old boys, bonding inspirational speakers, bonding selections of teams from the same club. By the time they get on the field, they are so bonded they can’t move.

No matter how much NSW try to construct a Queensland-type cultural thing, they struggle to pull it off. And despite the enormous imbalance of success, Queenslanders still manage a superior chip on their shoulder. As Reece Walsh said the other day, it’s easy to hate NSW because ’“they think they’re better than us”. Based on what exactly? Surely not anything to do with rugby league.

What’s the fix for the cultural deficit? How to manufacture something that only occurs in nature? Sometimes, the frustration boils over in a completely spontaneous way and you do see an authentic NSW culture. Andrew Johns blew up on the telly at his Queensland fellow commentators last year, showing how fed up he was with another year of being taunted. He looked like he wanted to vomit. Or just had.

This year, his Origin nerve is so sensitive that he’s fallen out with his brother. Johns is a long-serving assistant to NSW coaches, but somehow his emotions are as coachable as his skills (in other words, not). It’s obviously very frustrating for the best-ever and most passionate Blues player to remain unmatched such a long time since he retired. Wally Lewis, who was that icon for Queensland, saw successive generations rise to his level.

Maybe the solution is – warning, Seinfeld reference incoming – to do the opposite and stop caring. When loser George Costanza decides to say and do the opposite of what he normally says and does, he becomes a winner. He stops trying too hard; he stops trying, full stop.

It’s comedy, but not only comedy. Many sports psychologists, when they see performers over-stressed through effort, work at the opposite: that is, getting them to convince themselves that they don’t care.

‘NSW is a complicated state of mind that sometimes hates itself more than it hates Queensland’

Caring too much, paradoxically, is the true legacy of NSW’s history of “not getting Origin”. For years, they have tied themselves in knots of strenuous caring. We saw it in Adelaide a fortnight ago: an Origin where the Blues were unable to trust themselves, overwhelmed by Queenslanders who just let it go. Queensland’s secret? Cameron Munster: “We played footy”. Daly Cherry-Evans: “We played footy”. What were NSW doing? Trying, so very hard, to try, and, with all that trying, unable to play footy.

Unlike George Costanza’s show, it doesn’t stand up to thirty years of repeats. It’s just not that clever.

Now is the perfect time for NSW to give up. Fittler? Give up. Blues culture? Forget about it. Mitchell Moses? The only way is up.

Nobody wants to play for the Blues, or the Navies, or the Greys, or the Teals, whatever they are. For supporters, it’s also time to go cold turkey on caring. Joey? Give your brother a hug. Your team has zero chance. Zero. The whole concept sucks. Queenslanders get it? They can have it.

If there’s one other rule in Origin, it’s that the greater the certainty about the result, the opposite tends to happen.

Feels better already, doesn’t it?

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