State of Origin: Breaking Down Queensland's Change In Attack

Billy Slater made a significant personnel change for Game 2 by introducing Tom Dearden for Daly Cherry-Evans.

He gave up his captain, the experience he brings, reliability late in games, and his long kicking game to keep the Queensland Maroons in games late in the first place, for Dearden’s speed and danger with the ball.

He opened up the space for his most dangerous weapons on the edges.

While changing the player in the jerseys is one thing, it’s the detail in how Queensland adjusted in attack that is most encouraging for an exciting Game 3.

The New South Wales Blues edges are strong defensively, particularly when they’re aggressive and jamming. Stephen Crichton is one of the best defenders in the game. He’s quick across the ground, strong in contact, and his length allows him to reel in players many would otherwise miss. Latrell Mitchell, while not spending a lot of time at centre recently, is at his best using his size and strength to be aggressive. Queensland did well to negate their strengths, though.

We saw Queensland use a lot of short passes and drop plays back into the middle while attacking the line throughout the first half.

This does two things:

It brings the edge defence up and often above the ball, leaving them a long way to travel if they’re to get back the 10 metres and organise the line to beat what Queensland hopes is a quick play-the-ball.

The Maroons finished with fewer post-contact metres in Game 2 (375m) than they did in Game 1’s defeat (481m). Rather than trying to beat the Blues at their strength in the power game, the Maroons seemed determined to end up on their elbows and knees, dropping short in the tackle at the expense of post-contact metres to generate a quick ruck.

It puts the ball in the middle of the field.

Where aggressive edges have time to get up off the line and jam on a longer shift from the far side, they don’t have that time when the ball is played in the middle of the field. Instead, they’re more likely to adopt a sliding approach. The middle defence is put in the washing machine, too.

We saw positive signs early as Cameron Munster dropped Val Holmes back under and between two defenders to generate a quick play-the-ball in their first attacking set.

That’s four Blues defenders from the post - a good look for a Maroons longside stacked with speed.

Presented with a couple of set restarts in the build-up to Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow’s opener, we saw Queensland put a lot of work into the New South Wales middle, again through drop plays, cutting back inside and short balls.

Munster doesn’t get the look he wants from the defence to start with, so bounces back off his left foot before Trent Loiero lays one back into the middle.

Check the difference in the edges, how high they get and how they’re able to cover the attack in these two shifts.