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Message: [QUOTE="Big Pete, post: 2583237, member: 1899"] [B]State of Origin 1980[/B] Queensland 20 (Boustead, Close tries; Meninga 7/7 goals) New South Wales 10 (Bretnall, Raudonikis tries; Cronin 2/3 goals) I'll start with the obligatory - the game has changed a lot since the 80s. 5m, no holds barred in the ruck, contested scrums, different scoring system etc. etc. The reason why I point this out is that I found it pretty difficult to distinguish what I was seeing and the differences between the two teams other than the scoreline. Basically, the gist I got was this. Queensland made the most of their opportunities, taking penalty goals when they could and through the work of Choppy Close were able to get on the board, where as NSW often refused to take the two points on offer and kept testing the Maroons line only to drop the ball in key situations. Otherwise, I had no idea what I was watching and really need to watch other games from that area to establish a clear context. Anways, the big talking point of this game was the debut of Artie Beetson in the Maroon and I've got to tell you, his performance held up very well. It seemed like in the first half he was simply playing up to his reputation and was just throwing offloads for the sake of it and picking fights in scrums because he's an enforcer but by the second, he was making more in-roads and was still coming up with big plays right until the 80th minute. For a 35 year old struggling to play first grade, he was pretty damn good on the evening. Also cool to hear a chant of 'Artie' from the Lang Park crowd - it's almost like the original Queenslander chant. He'd go close to my Dally M style polling, but Choppy was a clear stand out. Was the key participant in the Boustead try, scored a good individual try and came up with a lot of nice plays after his disappointing start to the contest. [B]One Game Wonders: [/B]Alan Smith, Greg Oliphant, Rod Reddy, Arthur Beetson, John Lang (Queensland) John McDonald (Queensland Coach) Graham Eadie, Tommy Raudonikis, Jim Leis, Graeme Wynn, Bob Cooper, Steve Edge, Gary Hambly, Robert Stone (New South Wales). [B]Thoughts:[/B] Pretty crazy to think that just under half of those involved only ever played one game in this arena. I've already touched on Artie, I thought he played well despite his age and was fairly impressed with what I saw of Lang & Reddy. Didn't think too much of the halves outside of the early stages. For NSW, I was impressed by Cooper who I thought came up with a few bullocking runs. Otherwise, the rest either lived up to their rep (Raudonikis & Edge), put forward busy efforts but hard to distinguish whether it was anything more than solid (Leis & Hambly) while Eadie was just plain poor. I think Steve Rogers was the worst player on the park, but by this point, Eadie was well past his best. [B] Referee:[/B] Billy Thompson - English referee who had some very expressive gestures. Didn't think much of him, blew a ton of penalties and seemingly let a lot of knock ons and other mistakes go. [B]Commentators[/B] - Billy J. Smith & Mick Veivers - A pro Queensland call team. I've always had a ton of time for Smith, he calls it like he's calling radio but there was always this cheekiness about his tone that makes a lot of his commentary a lot more palatable to Hadley. Veivers was a pretty sensible commentator, didn't provide a lot of insight but just called the action and gave credit where it was due with a Queensland bias. I'd take them over the current team. [/QUOTE]

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