Westpac NSW Blues coach Michael Maguire has crowned Mitch Moses to take his place among the great Origin halfbacks to win a decider before a Queensland-mad Suncorp Stadium crowd.
Until Wednesday night, there had only been two others to do it in 1994 and 2005.
“Ricky Stuart, Joey (Andrew Johns) and now Mitchell – they are three players who have broke what everyone told me was the unbreakable … coming up to Brisbane and winning,” Maguire said after the Blues won Game Three 14-4 in Brisbane this week.
It was a comeback for the ages after NSW played the majority of Game One (5 Jun) with 12 men after centre Joseph Aukuso-Suaalii was sent off, before heading to the neutral MCG for Game 2 (26 June), which they won comfortably 38-18.
“Before the series everyone said, ‘You must win the first game’. The percentages showed you needed to win Game One to win the series,” Maguire said.
“But to the players credit they brushed that aside, even through the adversity of Game One.
“You dream of being around the Origin arena as a kid and it’s very special to be part of it as a coach.
“Everyone continually told me there’s no passion around NSW, well boy are they wrong – you saw that Wednesday night on what this team means.
“A lot of the old boys over the last three or four months showed us and told us about all the passion and history in and around the NSW jersey.”
Maguire said his strongest memory of the Game Three win was the closeness of the contest.
“It was a real dogfight. The players had to fight for 80 minutes.
“Right from the first set they sort of set the bar about ruck speed.
“So it became a game where you just had to fight for one moment in time. We had to do that right until the end to be able to achieve that.”
