It’s a philosophy that applies as much to the under 8s at the local park as it does the State of Origin cauldron – you can’t score points without the ball.

NSW found that out the hard way on Wednesday night – starved of possession and opportunity during a 20-minute burst which put the game to bed.

In one of the most one-sided openings to a Origin match ever seen, Queensland didn’t give the Blues a sniff.

Over the first 20 minutes the Blues made 108 tackles compared to the Maroons meagre total of 31.

Queensland ran for 415 metres – almost eight times more than NSW who made just 55 metres, mostly in short burst coming off their own line.

The Maroons kept it simple, but they did the simple things well.

The Blues were like a dazed explorer battling out of quicksand.

The swarming defence which had nullified Queensland’s dummy half play in Sydney was non-existent, as evidenced by the fact Maroons No.9 Cameron Smith was named man of the match.

Central to NSW’s struggles was the kicking game that had been dominant in game one but was badly out of whack at Suncorp Stadium.

For this Mitchell Pearce and James Maloney have to put their hands up to take the blame.

Far too often they struggled to find the ground with kicks – a ploy which gave Queensland a running start on every set via Billy Slater and Darius Boyd.

Adding to NSW’s problems was the fact the Maroons also remembered they had one of the game’s most destructive players hanging out in the centres.

Barely sighted in the series opener, Greg Inglis made sure he got involved this time around – and the Blues had no answer to his unique brand of size and strength.

It was a pummelling like only the brilliant Maroons can dish out – the one saving grace for NSW being that fact it is still only 1-all heading to a mouth-watering decider on July 17.