- Billy Slater looked testy at Origin press conference
- Queensland coach gave strange answer to question
- New South Wales demolished Queensland 38-18 in MCG bloodbath
Queensland coach Billy Slater gave a surprising answer to a routine question after his team’s historic 38-18 loss to New South Wales at the MCG on Wednesday night.
A surprised Slater was abrupt when asked if he would consider personnel changes in the third game, saying: “I haven’t even thought about that.” We are still Queenslanders.
When asked to explain further, Slater reiterated his strange response.
“Well, we’re from Queensland,” he told the reporter.
When pressed further for an explanation, Slater said: “I said I hadn’t thought about that and we’re still Queenslanders so that’s it… Honestly, I haven’t thought about that.”
Slater did not know whether the AC joint injury suffered by Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow would keep him out of the State of Origin decider at Suncorp Stadium, where he said home advantage would mean nothing if his team could not correct the mistakes made in a historic MCG attack.
Tabuai-Fidow was injured in the first half and was taken off the field, but returned to score a try in the second 40 minutes which Slater said was “brave” without knowing the severity of the injury and whether the star backline I would be ready for the game. decider.
“He’s done an AC, that’s all I know,” Slater said.
Billy Slater (pictured right) was in no mood to talk after Origin 2 and gave a nonsensical answer when a journalist asked him a routine question.
Queensland suffered a 38-18 defeat to New South Wales at the MCG on Wednesday night.
“So it was a pretty tough effort for him to get back out there. Obviously he wasn’t 100 percent, but he knew the team needed him.”
While captain Daly Cherry-Evans admitted New South Wales’ attack against the Maroons felt “more physical”, Slater said any high kick or hit with the ball would be analyzed in the review without pointing out any dirty tactics by the Blues .
“I think Chez (Cherry-Evans) got the ball taken away from him once there, as far as I remember, but the game was moving so fast that we’re pretty high up (in the coaches’ box),” he said.
‘In our review we will find a lot of things. I’ll go over a lot of angles and that kind of stuff. I’ll do my job, but maybe I’ll comment on that later.’
Despite being beaten in the first half, when NSW racked up six tries, the Maroons won the second half 18-4 and head to their home stadium in Brisbane for the series decider with an ace up their sleeve.
Slater said he had not thought about changes to his lineup after Origin 2
The Origin decider will be in Brisbane at Suncorp on July 17
Queensland have won nine of the last 10 deciders and Slater was, however, able to take some positives from the second half. His team scored three tries, with Cherry-Evans involved in two of them, and only conceded one try.
“I think the second half was pretty good,” he said.
“I thought that our actions, the way we started the second half, we looked for our football a little more. We were patient. We were not looking for shortcuts to overcome the score.
‘We know what Suncorp is to us. It’s a decisive game, they’re fantastic games to be involved in, we won there a couple of years ago.
“But it doesn’t mean anything if we don’t address what happened in the first half. And we will. We’ll review our game and find out what we can do better.
“I will look at my performance over the last 10 days as if we are all looking at each other and ourselves, so we will look at it and bring our best performance to Suncorp.”