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Written off before the game with the odds stacked against them, the Maroons took inspiration from Queensland’s underdog team of 1995 as they plotted their comeback from a poor opening loss.

Like most of his teammates, hooker Harry Grant was below his best in Game One.

However, he pushed aside one of his most forgettable Origin performances, including errors and uncharacteristic decision-making, to help set a positive tone for the Maroons and win for the first time in five attempts while starting.

“This is the feeling you play footy for, the 80 minutes of effort and all your preparation is to enjoy moments like this,” Grant said.

“I think everyone had a little bit extra motivation and internal motivation, but then also a collective motivation as a team and it was good to pull that together, although we didn't pull it together for 80 minutes, we dug deep and hung in there.

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From the field: Harry Grant

“We've got a lot to work on. They scored more tries than us and sometimes, the footy gods are on your side, so that's what it was tonight.

“I know we'll enjoy this, but you have got to get yourself to win two games, so we're 1-1 and there's one to go.”

The Storm captain's Game Two performance included a try assist and 55 tackles, including one to end of the game alongside Tom Dearden where they dislodged the ball from Dylan Edwards as the Blues were making a late surge.

Maroons coach Billy Slater was full of praise for Grant's contribution at dummyhalf after the match and dismissed doubts about his ability to start games at representative level.

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Cameron Munster Try

“You can make a narrative around anything,” Slater said. “Do we all think Harry Grant's a great dummy half? Probably the best dummy half in the game … so creating a narrative around that, it's probably a little bit unfair.

“We're talking numbers here and the team hasn't played well when he's started at dummy half, but he's a wonderful player.

“He'd be the first to admit that he was below his standard in Game One. Harry doesn't do that too often, so it didn't surprise me the first half that he (had).”

The Maroons had never won in Perth in their past two attempts and were written off by many in this game – including Blues doyen Phil Gould who said in his podcast that he couldn't "see how Queensland win".

Grant said the being underdogs was not a new place for Queensland and that there was some inspiration to be taken from the exploits of the 1995 team, who were dismissed before a ball was kicked to become eventual whitewash winners.

“It's not really an unfamiliar thing, it's pretty familiar and everyone that's either a Queenslander or played for Queensland has seen that over the years and that's just part of it, we're OK with that,” Grant said.

“I think for us, it's knowing that we've got a whole lot of improvement in ourselves as a team and I think at the end of the day, we just want to make Queensland proud and Queenslanders proud, going to school, going to work on a Thursday and hopefully we did that.

Harry Grant and new Maroons captain Cameron Munster were key performers for Queensland.
Harry Grant and new Maroons captain Cameron Munster were key performers for Queensland. ©Anthony Kourembanas / NRL Images

“There's plenty of motivation. You don't have to look far in this group, in this footy team, for motivation and especially off a performance like Game One.

“We know that Game One wasn't our game and how we want to play and we left our game at training, so I think the really important thing for us this time was to train well but then take our game and our preparation into the game and we did that.

“On the ’95 team, we've spoken about that all week… that little bit of encouragement and those little reminders and that extra little bit of purpose.

"I think it definitely helped us in the back end of the game there, but it's important to take that into Game Three too.”

 

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