ARE you feeling the State of Origin buzz yet? / (min cost $ 0 ) or signup to continue reading No? Neither am I, which is a bit of a worry when we're only a few days out from the teams being named for game one. There's the traditional build-up to an Origin match, starting with the sides being announced and going right through to the kick-off, but there's also the build-up to the build-up, which goes for a few weeks, maybe a month. And that's been too boring for words, so I won't waste any here describing it.
Queensland coach Billy Slater is not a controversial figure. Backed up against a wall, he'll fire up, but no-one is backing anyone up against any walls. NSW coach Michael Maguire has, by design, been invisible.
He has no doubt been doing plenty in terms of preparation, behind the scenes, but he's been saying nothing publicly. We've heard more from Tibetan monks. Hopefully the interest will ramp up when the teams are named, but the problem there is that we have an extraordinarily long list of star players unavailable due to injury.
The team announcements are inevitably going to highlight that, so the interest is going to centre on which players get their Origin chance because the bigger names are out. There surely can't be any doubt that Nicho Hynes will be the NSW halfback. He's the last man standing, with Nathan Cleary and Mitchell Moses off the scene.
If everyone was fit, Hynes should be in the halves anyway - at five-eighth with Cleary at halfback. After being thrown on.
