Silent treatment: How Chambers turned the tables on Mitchell
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Latrell Mitchell copped it from the most successful Blues coach in Origin history, but Will Chambers bit his famed acid tongue to get one over the upstart centre who tormented him repeatedly throughout 2018.
Chambers turned the tables on Mitchell in Queensland's 18-14 upset of NSW on Wednesday night, as the Maroons repeated raids at Mitchell's left-edge defence prompted Brad Fittler into a reluctant reshuffle with the game in the balance.
A second-half sin-binning capped an average night out for Mitchell, with Phil Gould even questioning "whether or not he wants to be at this level and wants to play" in his post-game analysis for Channel Nine.
Mitchell's Origin I outing came in stark contrast to last year's corresponding fixture, when he gave Chambers a one-on-one bath at the MCG and laughed off the veteran's repeated sledging.
The budding Blues star trumped Chambers once again in last year's grand final and poached his Australian Test spot afterwards for good measure.
But with outside man Dane Gagai running in two tries as Queensland repeatedly targeted Mitchell and co in defence at Suncorp, Gagai revealed Chambers had put his famed gamesmanship on ice and emerged with a telling win over his opposite number.
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"There’s a lot of talk about how much of a trash talker Will is, but there was no talk from him [on Wednesday night], he was just out there playing footy," Gagai told NRL.com.
"It has worked for him before, but I think he just had a real focus on what he wanted to do, and it didn’t involve any chat. I could just tell, he knew what he was doing and it’s worked.
"I thought he was outstanding. Throughout the week we worked on that combination down our right side and I knew that he was going to be on, I could tell and he went out and did his job."
Chambers' verbal prowess saw him overwhelmingly voted the game's best sledger in NRL.com's player poll last month.
But the veteran centre was reluctant to buy into talk about his ongoing rivalry with Mitchell after Queensland went 1-0 up in the series.
"It's a team game and we’ve got a great group of boys that stuck tight and did our job together," Chambers said.
"There’s no individuals in this squad and we’re a team that believe in each other and we’ve done something special because of that."
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Chambers in turn spruiked the Maroons' pre-game approach that saw them refuse to publicly mention NSW or individual opponents, duly dominating the lead-up to Origin I.
"I guess there were doubters and those that didn’t think we were good enough on the outside, but you can’t pay attention to that," he said.
"We just had belief in the group we have. We had our clear game plan and we stuck to it, we didn’t worry too much about the opposition.
"Our concern was Queensland, that was our focus, the job was getting it done for this great state."
