State of Origin: Queensland Maroons win Game II for under-fire coach Billy Slater

“Good win?”

It was a suitably quizzical, “Who put a question mark on the teleprompter?” tone struck by Queensland coach Billy Slater after his Maroons held on to win State of Origin II.

Somehow, after leading by 20 at half-time, Slater still found himself speaking to the grit and determination of his team and another “backs-to-the-wall” victory.

Since his ascension to the job, Slater has regularly talked about the millions of Queenslanders the team plays for. But on a sodden Wednesday night on the other side of the country, they were doing it for just one.

“We needed to turn up for our coach tonight and we f***ing did,” Cameron Munster told Nine, before continuing in the press conference.

“We didn’t perform for him in game one. He got a lot of [flak] for it and he didn’t deserve it,” he told reporters.

“I played with Bill and we’re really close mates. When you have someone jabbing at him like that, it really hurts. It hurts me personally.

It would have been a neater return of serve had the game not been such a bludger from both teams.

The Blues invited Queensland to storm their castle with a slew of mostly deserved penalties and dropped balls, and the Maroons, to their credit, made them pay in the first half.

But NSW wasn’t panicked and came out firing in the second, scoring at will on the flanks, scoring five tries to four and falling short due to another wayward night off the kicking tee.

You’d be a brave soul to bet on NSW emulating that first half or kicking performance in the decider, but the attacking firepower that carried them from half-time to the final 10 minutes is to be expected in a decider at home. For the full 80.

This series was always a potential tipping and slipping point for Slater as Maroons coach and so it has proven.

Some of the sheen had come off after stunning series wins in 2022 and 2023, and his cryptic answers to questions started to feel more like obfuscation than inspiration.

The “We’re still Queenslanders” comment was eclipsed in the annals of ill-advised coaches’ remarks by his invocation of predecessor Paul Green’s suicide while defending himself against claims of being a grubby player. He apologised for those comments on the morning of Game II.

It smacked of a coach feeling the pressure of his position.

And his on-field calls continued to raise eyebrows, picking players like Moeaki Fotuaika and Trent Loiero in Game I and, despite indifferent outings for both, retaining them for Game II while explosive middle forward Corey Horsburgh got a cold on the sidelines, watching his teammates get dominated by NSW’s massive pack. And of course, there was the perplexing decision to name Ezra Mam as 18th man three NRL games after his controversially brief ban ended.

Meanwhile, captain Daly Cherry-Evans was dumped and Beau Fermor, after playing just the last 17 minutes on debut, was replaced by Kurt Capewell, a like-for-like player whose major difference is that he’s five years older.

Even seemingly little things like moving Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow from the centres to the wing for the Perth clash, with defensively iffy Valentine Holmes switching places to try to mark Stephen Crichton.

If all these decisions came off, there would have been a nationwide cull of crows for the feast that was to ensue. Ultimately, it was a mixed bag.

Capewell and halfback Tom Dearden were two of Queensland’s best on the night, as was new captain Cameron Munster. Loiero played simply and straight and, remarkably, found himself as one of only four Queensland starters without an error to his name.

But it wasn’t all joy. Tabuai-Fidow nabbed two tries, yes, but a costly error while fielding a Jarome Luai kick in a position unfamiliar to him invited NSW back into the game late. And his combination with rookie centre Rob Toia was peppered by Luai, Angus Crichton and hat-trick hero Brian To’o.

On the other side of the field, Holmes barely laid a finger on Stephen Crichton as he crossed in the 57th minute, even though the Maroons had the numbers in defence.

And Fotuaika’s place in the team will again come under scrutiny ahead of the decider after playing 22 minutes, taking seven runs, making 12 tackles and an error.

Unlike in an NRL season with 20-plus bites at the apple, there are no bad wins in Origin.

Legacies are cemented in ones, twos and, very occasionally, threes.

The Maroons have been utterly dominated in three halves of football, stormed through one with some help, and at the end of a miserable night in Perth, find themselves level with a Blues side as heavily favoured as any in recent memory.

While no-one would call Wednesday’s win one of the great Origin performances, the black-and-white result calmed the baying masses for a moment.

But the 50/50s won’t all go their way in the Sydney decider and they can’t rely on this Blues team to flub their lines so badly again.

For Slater and the Maroons to have any chance at winning a decider down south for the first time since 2013, they need to be infinitely better than just good enough.