Inside the NSW tactical masterclass everyone wanted, but few saw coming

July 10, 2026 — 5:00am

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Cameron Smith, as usual, was seeing around Origin corners.

“This is the best NSW has looked all series,” Smith, sitting on high as he does at Suncorp Stadium, mused after 13 minutes of what proved one of the great Origin upsets.

“The ball movement, and the speed at which they’re playing, they’re playing with a lot more freedom.”

At this point, the Blues hadn’t scored a point. But already, they had fixed up the stagnant, sterile attack that had pervaded all series.

Nathan Cleary and Mitchell Moses found their mojo as a big-stepping, booming boot halves pairing. Payne Haas found Cameron Munster, repeatedly, and monstered him.

NSW remembered how to defend an edge assault and after the missteps in Melbourne, Laurie Daley rotated his bench to near-perfection.

All the while, Queensland lost their heads – and the series – because for once, they didn’t have an answer to the Blues tactics.

Cleary and the House of Payne: How the Blues fixed their broken attack

Starting with Cleary, and buying into the whole “owning Origin” malarkey for a moment, he now has his very own, negatively geared, Origin McMansion.

His man-of-the-match, Wally Lewis medal-winning efforts started where so many fine halfback performances do – in defence.

His first significant involvement was chopping down a well-timed Kurt Capewell run at the tryline – the type of angled line NSW simply couldn’t stop at the MCG.

In concert with Moses, the delineation of their roles has never been clearer. Moses took on all the long-kicking when NSW were under pressure, consistently........

© The Age