The Origin hell that haunts Blues fans is back with Billy Slater as coach of the Maroons

That’s especially true in Queensland.

And with all due respect to the likes of Paul Green and Michael Hagan, the Maroons have always needed someone who can inspire them. Someone the players idolise. Someone with that elusive, magical aura about them. Someone like Billy Slater.

The sight of the Melbourne champion with his cap backwards in full Maroons kit is haunting for any NSW fan who survived the desperate years between 2006 and 2013. With Cameron Smith and Johnathan Thurston at his side, the winning insight they can spit at an impressionable group of young Queenslanders is collectively better than anything NSW has ever produced.

Between the trio, they’ve played in 110 Origin matches for 69 wins. Smith and Thurston have the most wins and best winning records for any Origin player in history – Smith with 26 wins from 42 games (an Origin record in itself) and Thurston with 24 wins from 37 games. Slater, who battled more injuries than his assistants across his career, has 19 wins from 31 games.

By contrast, the best NSW ever produced was Blues coach Brad Fittler, with 17 wins from 31 games. But even then he doesn’t make the top five. Freddy, king of whacky Origin vibes, is the right man for NSW just as Slater could be for the Maroons.

Few career coaches have been able to navigate the delicate difference between preparing an NRL side and rallying an Origin team over three games. Wayne Bennett is the obvious exception, with his 2020 victory with an inexperienced team one of the best Origin series wins in the history of the game. But before then, Mal Meninga was the blueprint for success.

He was a Queensland hero, someone to intimidate but inspire the players with his winning sensibilities and love of the Maroons. When he took over as Queensland coach in 2006, he’d been retired from playing for 12 years. But there were enough players in the Maroons side old enough to remember watching him destroy oppositions of every creed, in every grade.

He was a hero to guys like Slater, Smith and Thurston, just as Billy is now to the 2022 squad. The ex-Melbourne fullback is just four years retired and his winning aura is still fresh. Even the youngest players in the Maroons side, Selwyn Cobbo, 20, and Jeremiah Nanai, 19, are old enough to have grown up idolising Billy.

The whole squad remembers his famous chip-and-chase to score in 2004, and his try-saving tackle on Anthony Watmough in 2010. They probably watched every one of his 12 tries in the Maroons jersey from their lounge rooms in Queensland as kids.

So too the Blues squad, who no doubt remember the absolute misery that was Queensland’s dynasty when Slater was roaming the field.

In case anyone forgot, NSW won just one series between 2006 and 2017. In 11 years it was a Trent Hodkinson dummy that brought the state one moment of relief.

It’s a hell every Blues fan wants to forget, and yet it feels fresh again.

Slater has been a part of some of the biggest moments for his state – the kind that will play in highlight reels until the end of time, but he also knows how important the little things are too. Things like effort in defence and communication and trust. Everything that he based his game on as a player.

“We all have this perception that Origin is about big moments, and it is, history tells that story,” he said on Tuesday.

“This team has had some really big moments in the 42 years of Origin, but let me tell you, the small moments are really important. They’re the ones that we’ve spoken about, not necessarily the big moments. They’ll happen. They’ll come. But they’ll never happen if you don’t do the small moments.

“That’s really important for the players to focus on because if you focus on the big moments you forget about the small ones.”

He formed a huge part of the most successful Origin dynasty we may ever see. Confidence was never, ever an issue for the Maroons when Slater was in the side. Across the past week he’s tried to emulate that feeling as a coach, by bringing Greg Inglis, Gordon Tallis, Wally Lewis and Dallas Johnson into camp too. No official roles for anyone, they were just there to inspire. Purely for the vibes.

For a new generation of Maroons players, that feeling is crucial.

Aside from Bennett’s miraculous Queensland squad in 2020, Fittler has had the upper hand when it comes to Origin inspiration across the past four years.

But in Slater he may have met his match.

“I don’t think you need to dive into too much what it means to Queenslanders,” Slater said about preparing a team for the first time.

“They remember back to when they were growing up and how this jersey made them feel. It’s a real inspiration, this colour, for our state, and that’s not lost to our players. That’ll be in the back of their mind when they take the field tomorrow night.”

It’ll be the first team since Game Two, 2017, to have the privilege of looking across at Slater, Thurston and Smith in the sheds before they run out to do battle.

If you could bottle that confidence you’d be a billionaire.

Queenslanders remember how Billy made them feel, but so do NSW fans.

On Wednesday night they have every right to be nervous about it.