When former New South Wales five-eighth Josh Reynolds runs out for his final rugby league game this weekend, there’s a chance Wednesday’s State of Origin match will already be fading into the background for Blues fans.
Yes, it’ll be because it’s a dead rubber, but even if the Blues manage to restore a little pride with Brad Fittler’s heavily criticised team, the good times aren’t likely to last long.
It’s because New South Wales has a problem with its history and the way it remembers a certain type of Origin hero.
The southern state commemorates its greatest players just fine, like Queensland does, but the Maroons faithful have a special place in their heart for lesser-heralded players who rose to the occasion when their time came.
The legendary Queensland spirit comes not just from the likes of Wally Lewis, Cameron Smith or Cameron Munster, but from Lindsay Collins and Reuben Cotter, from Fatty’s Neville Nobodies in 1995, and Wayne Bennett’s “Worst Queensland Team Ever” in 2020 — players and teams who succeeded not because they were chosen by providence but because they wanted it more and they were willing to fight harder for it when it counted.
Not all of us can be blessed, but you don’t have to be blessed to go hard, and the guys who play that way earn a different kind of love from the masses.
If you need proof, ask the next Queenslander you see about Collins, or Adam Mogg, or just look them in the eye and say “Go Dozer” in the most Caxton Street voice you can muster.
Those stories are far rarer in New South Wales, and when they do get told they quickly get forgotten.
If a player or a team isn’t the absolute best and if their triumph is not total and beyond doubt, it just doesn’t last as long in the people’s hearts.
Which brings us back to Reynolds, who will retire after Canterbury’s NSW Cup match against North Sydney on Saturday.
Reynolds’s Origin career has been over for nine years. He only played for the Blues four times and won just two of those matches. The player he was back then is just a memory now.
Nobody can be young and angry forever and for a long while now there has been more to Reynolds as a player and a man than being pissed off all the time.
There would be younger New South Wales fans who didn’t even know he played for his state and that is a grave injustice because few have worn it harder.
The 2014 New South Wales Origin side is the most important Blues team of this century, and the magnitude of their achievement in ending Queensland’s eight-year winning streak is one of the state’s finest hours — and it does not happen without Reynolds.
The Maroons had the major edge in talent, even after Cooper Cronk broke his arm in Origin I. Outside of Jarryd Hayne and Paul Gallen, Queensland had the Blues just about covered in terms of man-to-man ability.
But after eight years of being beaten down until they were so low it felt like they’d be staring up at the Maroons forever, the Blues found an inhuman desperation that helped them overcome all the athletic and technical advantages Queensland had at their disposal.
The Blues had other key contributors, like Gallen and Hayne and Ryan Hoffman, but for a team like that there is no better tip of the spear than Reynolds.
Back then, Reynolds was a pitbull in footy boots who wanted what he wanted like other guys only think they do.
He was not the most gifted attacking player – he didn’t record a try, a try assist, a line break or a line break assist in his Origin career — nor was he the most creative – in the two games they won in the 2014 Origin series, the Blues scored a total of three tries.
But Reynolds had a hunger for victory and a willingness to do whatever it took to get it, meaning that by the end nothing else mattered.
Through Game I and Game II he played like he was fighting his way out of a trash can. You’d never teach someone to play like that, but it was magnificent in its own way.
On the night the Blues ended the streak in Sydney, that hunger proved to be a greater force than what Johnathan Thurston could muster and given Thurston is one of the greatest players in the history of this sport, that was quite a bit.
There might not have been another day in either of their lives where Reynolds could have outplayed the Queensland champion, who carries a similar fire inside him but also had remarkable skills to go with it — but Reynolds found a way.
He was on Thurston all night like it was a calling from God above, like his only reason for existing was to give Thurston the worst 80 minutes of his life, like he was made for this.
Reynolds played like he was in a back-alley brawl and even if key attacking touches eluded him, he hustled hard enough in attack and defence it made up the difference.
In the final minutes, with the Blues leading 6-4 and with victory so close they could taste in their spit, Thurston snapped.
He took exception to Reynolds and his constant pestering and rubbed his forearm in Reynolds’s face in a tackle. It looked painful, but even if Thurston was carrying a crowbar he couldn’t have hurt him that night.
When Reynolds looked up at him, the Blue was screaming and laughing and winning. He wanted it more. He got Origin. It was never like that again, but that doesn’t really matter because it was like that when it mattered most. Isn’t that part of what Origin is supposed to be all about?
After eight years, once was enough and even now it should still be enough for him to be a Blues legend.
It makes a difference when there’s an unspoken language behind a jersey that everybody understands. There is only so much a coach can show a player in an Origin camp.
There is only so much they can learn in that short time and what Reynolds did for his state was powerful in a way a pre-game speech or a tactical switch can never be.
It speaks to our beating hearts and our furious minds, to the raw emotions that drive players beyond their limits when they answer the call for their state.
Instead, Reynolds and Trent Hodkinson, who scored the winning try that night, were pushed down the memory hole. The diehards and the sickos remember, but it’s not like it should be.
It wouldn’t be this way if he wore Maroon. If he was a Queenslander, they’d have carved his and Hodkinson’s faces on the side of a mountain.
He’d never pay for a beer north of the Tweed again. People would stand and salute him every Origin night from now until the end of time. Nine years later, they’d still talk about it like it was yesterday.
And the next time they were up against it, the next time they were facing a team who looked like they couldn’t be touched and, through choice or necessity, they turned to a young fella who was going up against someone he grew up watching, that player would remember what Josh Reynolds did and be inspired.
It’s something every New South Wales fan should treasure, not a forgotten treasure that needs to be dusted off when we eulogise his career.
Why do Queenslanders seem to become superheroes when they play Origin? Because they’ve seen guys just like them do it before.
They have heard the stories so often it feels like this has been a part of their whole lives. They always remember and that isn’t just a strength, it’s a weapon. When your most annoying Queensland friend says New South Wales just doesn’t get Origin, this is part of what they mean.
It never seems to happen that way for the Blues because New South Wales – the state, not the team — forgets the last time it happened. They don’t remember what it’s like to see a player rise above himself. They forget the team that plays best is more dangerous than the best team.
They forget guys like Josh Reynolds. They forget the things he did for them. They forget that, for a few legendary nights, he was much more than just another guy.