When State of Origin coaches Laurie Daley (NSW) and Billy Slater (Queensland) take their seats in the coaches box at Accor Stadium on May 27, it will be the first game they have coached under the NRL’s new rules.
An expanded bench and an increase in the remit of six agains has challenged NRL coaches, some of whom are still making wrong replacements after two months of the season. So Loz and Billy must cope with the added pressure of an even faster game and more tactical options in an annual contest that captivates a vast audience.
Their brutal agenda is: Origin I – coach first game of the year, and under new rules; Origin II – the loser must win to level the series; Origin III – win the title.
As current Australia coach and former Maroons mentor Kevin Walters said: “Tactically you have to be very smart in Origin, and even more so now. The pace of Origin is super fast, quicker than the NRL, and the new six again rules make you wonder how can Origin be faster?”
Daley won’t have Craig Bellamy to assist either as he devotes attention to the struggling Storm. A former Blues coach, Bellamy said: “We all have our planned rotations on who to bring off and when and their replacements, but there is often something you can’t plan for, and it’s more likely to happen in Origin.”
Daley will have NRL assistants Matt King and Brett White, as well as Boyd Cordner, but the head coach must be the ultimate decision maker on tactical changes and reading the body language of exhausted players.
Nor will Slater have Josh Hannay, now with the Titans, but he told the Herald his assistants “will be the same as last year.” Asked how he will cope with the new rules, Slater said: “You always have to adapt, but you also always have to remember what works in footy. You can’t forget the fundamentals of the game.”
Daley, who returned to Origin in 2025 after the six-year tenure of Brad Fittler and one year service of from Michael Maguire, acknowledges the rapid speed up of the game.
“It’s got even quicker this year with six agains replacing penalties in the defensive half of the field,” Daley said. “There are probably about three more six agains in that space, meaning the rest time you got from a penalty to kick for the sideline and then set up a tap play is taken out of the game. It’s probably 40 seconds times three. Two minutes extra ball-in-play time doesn’t sound much, but it is to a footy player.”
Walters agrees Daley and Slater will be under pressure, pointing out the expanded six-man bench could offer too much choice.
“They [the rule makers] have taken away the utility player,” he said referring to players such as NSW’s Connor Watson, a hooker who can substitute in multiple positions and is much underrated.
“Replacements are normally like for like, centre for centre. But using a replacement back as one of your four substitutes can affect the rotation of your middle forwards. Both Brisbane players, Payne Haas [now unavailable for NSW] and Pat Carrigan [Queensland] can play 80 minutes, but who else?
“Penrith’s Isaah Yeo [NSW] can usually play 80, but he’s been getting spells this year. You need to carry between two and four big-minute players in the forwards and a lot of clubs don’t have them.”
However, the expanded use of the six again rule means some NRL clubs, such as Penrith, don’t carry a middle forward on the bench because the ad-lib play from quick sets could render “settlers” obsolete.
On the other hand, Origin is old-fashioned football, meaning forwards charge at each other with all the subtlety of bull elephants in the mating season. A coach who chooses young mobile forwards over dominant middles could be exposed. NSW is expected to carry a minimum of three middles on the six-man bench.
Fittler, Walter’s opposite in two series, is aware of the challenge of making the right replacement following heavy criticism of him when he used half Nicho Hynes as a centre in a game one loss in 2023. “Freddy” Fittler also shares with Walters the concern of six agains speeding up the ruck, which has reduced the control coaches have over the game.
Play-the-ball speed has averaged about 3.5 seconds for five years, but is now slightly faster with 0.07 of a second taken off. He said of his time in charge of the Blues: “We aimed to get Queensland into five-second play-the-balls. Now it is the opposite. You don’t get to control a game like you would like. The team that thinks on the run wins. Success in Origin usually comes down to personnel and even more so now.”
Ricky Stuart, also a former Origin coach, is confident Daley and Slater will cope with the new rules, saying: “They watch a lot of football and will have a feel for the new rule and the scenarios involving the six-man bench.”
Sometimes, the pent-up emotion in Origin is so significant that even the most experienced coach is impotent to stem a negative tide. Daley was thrilled with NSW’s preparation for the decider last year in Sydney, telling the team: “Perfect preparation translates to perfect performance.”
But when Jarome Luai lobbed a soft catch into the Maroon in-goal, resulting in a seven-tackle set, it was as if the NSW players collectively thought: “That wasn’t supposed to happen.”
The Blues never recovered and Queensland, driven by the need to honour the passing of the father of captain Cameron Munster, were as unstoppable as wrinkles.
Walters admits to a similar feeling of helplessness on the eve of a 2019 match in Perth when TV cameras showed the Maroons players attempting to release a football trapped in the webbing of a ceiling net in the AFL-designed dressing room.
“I’m angry thinking about it now,” he revealed. “You know as a coach where they should be mentally in the minutes before they go out to battle. I really don’t know if any words of wisdom can help at that late stage. It’s the players’ time.”
Fittler experienced it as a player in 2001 in the decider in Brisbane when Allan Langer was brought back from England to play half. The prevailing narrative has always been “Alf’s” comeback inspiring the Maroons to victory, but it was also Fittler’s implosion in what was to be his farewell match.
“I was to retire from representative football after the game,” Fittler recalled. “I was having a bad year at the Roosters, but my second Origin game was probably one of the best games I ever played. As captain, I had my own room in Brisbane. I felt f—ed. Girds [centre Ryan Girdler] came to my room to join me in catching the bus to the ground. I nearly cried in front of him. I got to the ground, I felt crap. We started OK, but I didn’t help. We lost badly [40-14]. I had a mini-breakdown.”
Origin is a confronting beast, now with more speed and a greater complexity of options. It consumes even the greatest.
Fittler said of his meltdown: “I suppose it was fear of failure. My season for the Roosters wasn’t any good. It was as if everything was out of my control.”
Roy Masters is a Sports Columnist for The Sydney Morning Herald.Connect via email.
