Slater caught in the middle of awkward Maroons mystery

Queensland Rugby League’s farcical 2021 State of Origin series seemingly has the Maroons turning on one another in a bizarre state of affairs that’s thrown Billy Slater into the middle of it all.

The team has lost the first two games of the series 76-6 combined, and heads to the Gold Coast on Wednesday for a dead rubber that won’t do much to salvage their nightmare even with a victory.

They’ve been plagued by scandals, mainly the Ronaldo Mulitalo eligibility fiasco, followed by Jai Arrow’s senseless Covid bubble breach which put game three in jeopardy.

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Now there’s a new drama been thrown into the mix, and it came from one of the Queensland legends.

Paul Vautin took to radio over the weekend to claim the QRL shafted fellow great Slater, by offering him the head coaching role and then strangely taking it away from him weeks later.

Paul Green was eventually appointed as the coach, taking over from Wayne Bennett and previously Kevin Walters.

“Billy Slater was actually offered the job earlier in the year and he said ‘yeah I’ll take it’. A month went by and nothing happened,” Vautin told ABC radio.

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“Then Billy got a phone call from someone in the QRL saying ‘we’d love you to come in and have an interview’ and he said ‘an interview? What are you talking about? Didn’t you say I had the job?’.

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“They said ‘oh there’s been another guy come up’ and he said ‘you know what, you can stick your interview where the sun don’t shine, don’t worry about it’ and that’s when Paul Green got the job.”

It was a revelation to most and another bomb thrown at the QRL as the northern state scambles to save face in the wake of a horror series.

QRL boss Bruce Hatcher spoke to News Corp to refute Vautin’s allegation.

“I don’t know where he got the information from but I certainly can’t corroborate the story,” Hatcher said.

“I certainly know what I said. (Slater) was not offered the job outright by anyone who had the authority to make that decision.

“I will stand and do a stat dec for you if you want me to do that. That is how confident I feel about that statement.”

Senior journalist Paul Kent confirmed Hatcher’s version of events when speaking to NRL 360 on Monday.

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“It’s all fantasy. It didn’t happen like that at all,” Kent said.

“With all due respect to Fatty (Vautin), the fact was, QRL formed a subcommittee of the board with three people on it and they interviewed Paul Green and Billy Slater. They offered the job to Paul Green, he accepted the job. They then offered Billy Slater the assistant job, which he knocked back.”

Slater broke his silence on the situation when speaking to Wide World of Sports on Monday.

The champion fullback has been tipped to replace Green if the QRL axes the latter after his failed maiden series in charge.

Slater clarified what really happened between him and the governing body.

“I was in discussions with people from the QRL over the summer when Wayne Bennett said he wasn’t going to coach the team after last year.

“They did put it to me. There were people who asked me if I would be interested in coaching and to be honest, I was taken aback.

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“I never really sat down and considered it. My advice to QRL was they needed to go away and work out who exactly they thought was best for the job.

“All us Queenslanders want is the best person to lead Queenslanders going forward. I didn’t want to be a part of the circus.

“When it started to become that, I called Bruce Hatcher and told him that I didn’t want to be a part of that.”

Slater threw his support behind Green to continue coaching the Maroons.

“He’s our coach. We don’t want to be throwing him out after two games.

“We need to stick by him. The most disappointing thing for me about all of this was how it was interpreted that were was a friction between myself and QRL.”

Originally published asSlater caught up in awkward Maroons rumour

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