Queensland have expressed disappointment that NSW performed their lap of honour during skipper Cameron Smith's victory speech after Origin III while also refuting suggestions that Queenslanders were bad winners.
Speaking after the last-gasp 18-14 loss in a series they had already wrapped up after two games, skipper Cameron Smith was tight-lipped about Blues players not hanging around for the end of the formalities to do a lap of the ground thanking fans.
In a response to outgoing Blues captain Paul Gallen's labelling of Queenslanders earlier in the week as poor winners, Smith added that he felt the Maroons playing group has been humble right throughout its 11 years of Origin dominance.
In a terse press conference, Smith also took aim at both the on-field officials and the bunker for a series of calls he did not agree with in the see-sawing match.
"I did, yeah," Smith said when whether he noticed the Blues' non-attendance during his on-stage speech after full-time.
"It's something our team wouldn't do."
Coach Kevin Walters said he felt it was "extremely disrespectful".
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For his part, Gallen said in his post-match press conference he didn't notice the Maroons captain was still speaking when he and his players performed the lap.
"I didn't even notice. We did what we had to do then we thanked the fans," Gallen said.
Smith wasn't done with NSW though, hitting back at Gallen's earlier comments.
"For a team that's won 10 series in 11 years I think we've been very gracious and very humble with our victories and the same when we have lost games and the series in 2014," Smith said.
"You wouldn't come across a more humble group of guys than we've got there at the moment. That's my opinion. Gal can say whatever he wants. We're quite content within our own skin and who we are and what we're about."
Smith disagreed with the bunker's ruling that an offside Michael Jennings did not play a part in Andrew Fifita's 42nd-minute try, saying it should have been an automatic offside call in his view, and also labelled the sin-binning of Cooper Cronk for a professional foul 10 minutes before half-time as a '50-50' call.
However both Smith and Walters praised the efforts of the Queensland team to hang on in the face of a 12-3 penalty count against them and to keep their try-line intact during a late first-half battering with only 12 men on the field.
"I thought it was a tremendous spectacle. Our blokes were tremendous again tonight. Their effort and their commitment to the jersey was better than games one and two, we just weren't quite good enough tonight," Walters said.
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