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How a ‘robust conversation’ helped Queensland win State of Origin
Nicholas Quinlan • July 12th, 2025 6:20 pm
Cronulla and Queensland assistant coach Josh Hannay has given the inside story as to how the Maroons were able to turn around from their Game I defeat to win this year's State of Origin series.
It was a remarkable series win for the Maroons as they channelled their Queenslander spirit to win Games II and III after being written off by large sections of the Rugby League world.
Their win would be helped by the decisions that coach Billy Slater made at the selection table with the help of Hannay and fellow assistant Johnathan Thurston.
This included the decision to drop captain and halfback Daly Cherry-Evans following Game I and have Tom Dearden starting in Game II.
Reflecting on the aftermath of that match -- where Queensland lost 18-6 to NSW at Suncorp Stadium -- Hannay admits it wasn’t too much longer before they decided to make changes for Game II.
“I think first and foremost, after Game I, people talk about pick and stick,” Hannay told SEN’s Saturday League Kick-Off.
“But the reality is the performance was such that night that we felt compelled to make changes. We didn’t like what we saw, and those discussions started within half an hour after that Game I.
“We really started to look ahead based on what we thought we saw in that game, and certainly the review process backed up our gut feel on certain things.
“There are always calculated decisions, you go with your gut a little bit, but you also go with analysis, and you look at a lot of vision.
“The only thing that vindicates the decision is the result. If you lose, people question those decisions and only winning validates them, so as it turned out, all the decisions made for Game II and Game III panned out to be the right ones.”
Hannay also felt that his conversation with Slater in the lead-up to Game III was instrumental to their win after the pair discussed their squad and whether Reece Walsh or Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow should be the starting fullback.
“I’ll be really honest here, on the Sunday evening I was in Melbourne,” Hannay said.
“We’d just played the Melbourne Storm down there and I had a conversation with Bill (Slater) at around 6 o’clock that night and it was a fairly robust conversation to be really honest.
“Because we didn’t agree on everything. Reece Walsh, certainly his name came up.
“I guess the simplicity of just bringing in Reece (to No. 1) and leaving everything the same as Game II in terms of our edge combinations. That was absolutely an option.
“But at the end of the day, it’s Bill’s call and Bill trusted his instinct on putting Hammer to fullback, shifting Val (Holmes) from left centre over to right wing and gifting a debut to Gehamat (Shibasaki) at left centre.
“So yeah, it was a robust conversation, but at the end of the day, once we made the final decision, we’re all on board with it and invested in getting the best out of that squad.”
