“It can be done,” Maguire said. “If this group gets together like they have in this game,there’s no reason why things can’t happen. What you saw in the first half is what I believe that this group is capable of. We have got to replicate that moving forward.”

That possibility was written all over the face of Maroons coach Billy Slater,who sat up in his glass house in visible devastation. Maguire left his own just before half-time and weaved through the concourse to ensure he was on the sideline as his side walked up the tunnel for the break. Afterwards,he addressed his“glass houses” sledge that has commanded most of the past week’s headlines.

“I just called out what I saw,” Maguire said. “We’ve got a really tight group within us and I felt there were probably a few things thrown out in a certain way. I just called it out,that’s all I did. The team supports each other. You probably saw that out there. I was stating a fact that a few things were said about one of my players.”

And the whole thing must have been as disorienting for Madge as it was for the other 90,000 crammed into Melbourne’s most iconic sporting venue and the many more witnessing it unfold from afar. All the pundits were talking about the past and the Blues’ 4-1 record at the MCG,but also feeling like Slater’s Maroons had a win written in the stars. It was old hat and futuristic all at once. Like only realising The Temper Trap are still around once they started the pre-match entertainment.

Then the match started,and the first drops of rain fell as the ball connected with Lomax’s boot. And then all the other things happened.

Queensland missed 16 tackles by the 20-minute mark,by which point they had survived a 16-tackle onslaught only to make a defensive error in the 17th that proved costly. Daly Cherry-Evans martyred himself on the stone table to save his teammates to no avail. He could not stop Stephen Crichton dragging Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow into the in-goal,which opened the door for Mitchell to send Brian To’o over in the corner. By the interval,they were down 34-0 – the biggest half-time deficit in Origin history. Reece Walsh was barely sighted.

“I think the whole dressing room in there is disappointed,” Slater said. “It was a tough old first half. It felt like we were running uphill. We’ll look at our game and work out what we need to adjust. What I do know is there is a game in three weeks’ time.”

If you were to walk with a trundle wheel from Accor Stadium to the MCG,the metres clicked over would pretty much match the distance by which Moses and his Blues cohort have now distanced themselves from the massacre that was game one.

The Blues here fielded arguably their strongest team in some time,and,at a neutral venue,were never going to roll over easily. And it is true there is a statistic to back this up:NSW have levelled the series on four of the last five occasions they have lost game one.

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