State of Origin 2020 game 1: Queensland Maroons v NSW Blues – live!

I got ahead of myself with Lee. Poor guy has limped off Adelaide Oval during the warm-up. Sami is in after all.

Conspiracy theories kicking off:

Speaking of Gould, he revealed this morning that he got Nathan Cleary on the blower ahead of his first game since that misdirected NRL grand final pass that led to a Melbourne Storm try.

“I just rang just to see how he was going,” Gould told Nine’s Wide World of Sport. “He said, ‘It’s going through my head all the time’. I said, ‘Don’t worry … I lost a grand final 40 years ago and it’s still going through my head. You’re not going to forget. People say that you’ll forget, you won’t forget. You won’t ever forget it, so don’t think there’s going to be a day where you’ll forget it, you will remember it for the rest of your life; so get used to that and get over it and just go out and go again’.”

I would also like to acknowledge Phil Gould’s excellent efforts to allay fears his Channel Nine commentary is biased. Those NRL grand final haters don’t know what they are talking about.

Gus is answering a lot of enquiries on Twitter in the build-up if you are short of a pre-game activity.

So Queensland have confirmed Kurt Capewell will start in the centres. The Penrith utility, who will likely replace Phillip Sami in the backline, had been named on the Maroons’ extended bench but suffered an injury scare yesterday. We presume his groin niggle was nothing serious.

Brenko Lee is expected to overcome a calf issue to partner Capewell as the first rookie centre pairing in Origin history.

Speaking of history, State of Origin turns 40 tonight.NSW, meanwhile, are set to play three debutants in Clint Gutherson, Luke Keary and Junior Paulo.