A couple of years ago, Billy Slater had his Queensland players eating out of the palm of his hand so much, they resorted to speaking Zulu in their darkest State of Origin moments.
Everywhere they went, players would talk about “Ubuntu”. Over coffee in the morning, tagging the slogan on social media, on the field in sun-kissed training sessions during the middle of winter, in team meetings, and most importantly when NSW were peppering their line during a tense moment in a match.
Ubuntu! The slogan roughly translates to, “I am, because we are”.
All coaches are thieves in one way or another, and the best just seize ideas better, then use them better than their rivals.
Slater sat his players down before the 2023 series and made them watch a documentary on the Boston Celtics’ historic NBA championship in 2008, in which coach Doc Rivers and his stars chanted the word before finals games. Above all, Rivers wanted his lavishly paid players to be selfless, and represent their city like no other. They beat the Lakers in six games for Boston’s first title in more than two decades.
It was perhaps no surprise the Maroons blasted their way to the 2023 Origin series in two games, beating a shellshocked NSW in the Adelaide opener after coming from behind late in the game with a man in the sin-bin, and then bludgeoning the Blues back at Suncorp. They bellowed “Ubuntu” at each other throughout, a rare message able to be heard above the hum of Origin crowds.
If Slater was even mildly interested in an NRL head coaching gig at the time, he could have named his own price.
But if a week is a long time in rugby league, then two years is an eternity. And coaching Origin, history suggests, is a gig that gets tougher the longer you do it.
Slater’s stunning success in his first two years pretty much ended the road for NSW coach and commentary colleague Brad Fittler, who refused to accept reduced terms for another year.
But what’s largely forgotten in the Fittler narrative is how wildly successful he was in the first two years, ending Queensland’s run of 11 series wins in 12 years by ripping up everything NSW thought they should do with Origin.
He selected untried bluebloods en masse, made them walk on grass fields barefoot, offered yoga sessions of a morning and generally threw open the doors to anyone who had an interest in what was going on. It was refreshing, and it also stimulated his players.
Like Fittler, Slater is finding it far harder to maintain the Origin rage than getting it started.
When Slater first took over as Queensland coach in 2022, he came as a polished media performer with Nine, and promptly sold the message expertly to anyone who cared to listen.
He tapped into his players’ psyche – and perhaps galvanised Queensland’s supporters – with continual references to the “fires, floods and droughts” the state’s people had to endure. He even referenced the natural disasters when he made his retirement announcement as an Origin player in 2018.
When Cameron Munster was ruled out of the deciding Origin match in 2022 with Covid-19, Slater sat down a little, blond-haired kid called Tom Dearden in his hotel room and delivered him a message along the lines of: “Queensland has chosen you”. Dearden became emotional.
He played a blinder a few days later as the Maroons held on in one of the greatest Origin matches of the modern era, one most thought they couldn’t win without Munster.
Slater can also put the acid back on journalists at his press conferences. A favourite tactic is when asked for his opinion or justification about a selection, is to turn the tables and ask: “Have you been watching him?”
But the narrative has either turned, or the message is starting to wear thin in the last two years.
Blues coach Michael Maguire famously put the blowtorch back on Slater with his “glasshouses” sledge after Joseph Suaalii was sent off for a savage shot on Reece Walsh in last year’s opener.
It prompted Slater’s nervous smile when the pair sat alongside each other for last year’s public press conference in Federation Square before NSW’s game two beatdown of the Maroons.
After the game, Slater said the Maroons would be right because, “we’re Queenslanders”. A quick-thinking journalist asked him what he meant by that comment, a thinly-veiled swipe at the mystique Slater had built into the Queensland Origin narrative.
Maguire’s pre-game remark was so pivotal and pointed because he knew Slater from his time as an assistant to Craig Bellamy at the Storm. And perhaps that has been Slater’s biggest roadblock: the NSW Rugby League has now enlisted those who know him best to beat him.
Maguire knew his character inside out. The Blues’ football manager, Frank Ponissi, worked alongside Slater his entire career in Melbourne. And now Slater’s only NRL coach, Bellamy, is helping Laurie Daley pull the strings with the Blues this year. It’s a helluva lot of intel they have on Queensland’s coach.
For so long one step ahead, Slater is trying not to look like he’s one behind now.
On Wednesday night, he will try to stave off a second straight series loss, and fifth defeat in six games, with NSW red-hot favourites to finish the job in Perth. A sign of his desperation to turn the tide, Slater has axed captain and veteran halfback Daly Cherry-Evans mid-way through the series, while recalling back-rower Kurt Capewell, who will be 32 next month.
Hindsight is a wonderful thing, but wouldn’t it have been easier to move on 36-year-old Cherry-Evans before game one off the back of indifferent club form and a losing series last year?
History shows that’s when Slater has usually made his most significant calls.
He called time on former teammate Christian Welch’s Origin career before he coached his first game in 2022, and then 23-capped Josh Papalii announced his Origin retirement days before selection for game one the following year, with Slater potentially going in another direction.
The Cherry-Evans call could define his coaching legacy.
But above all, maybe NSW have just found the key to be better than Queensland: a power game built around the tireless work of their back three, and arguably the game’s best prop, Payne Haas, who in the last 12 months has truly dominated Origin like he does every week in the NRL.
After NSW’s commanding game one win, Slater cut an unusually downbeat figure in his press conference. There were no references to fire, floods and droughts (although Daley said his players were thinking of the flood victims of the NSW mid-north coast in the build-up), no rah-rah we’re Queenslanders, and definitely no Zulu inspiration. He largely spoke about a football team desperately needing to find answers.
And he’ll still hope one Origin truism remains: when it comes game two, one teams wants to win, the other has to win.
