In the opening game of the 2005 series, Queensland raced to a commanding 19-0 lead after 50 minutes and looked certain to go one-up at a packed Suncorp Stadium.
But four unanswered New South Wales tries – to Luke Rooney, Mark Gasnier, Craig Fitzgibbon and Danny Buderus – gave the visitors an unlikely 20-19 lead with nine minutes to play.
Maroons great Johnathan Thurston then kicked a wonky field goal in the 78th minute to send the match to golden point, before a Brett Kimmorley cut-out ball four minutes into extra time changed the trajectory of that year’s Origin series.
“I can still see Matt Cooper in my vision,” Kimmorley recalled when asked about the match many years later.
“I threw the pass because they were short and I played instinct football and played what was in front of me. I still think the pass was on, because if I threw it a few steps earlier then it probably lands on Matt Cooper’s chest and we go off and make a line break.”
Unfortunately for Kimmorley and the Blues, the pass was read perfectly by Queensland’s super-sub Matt Bowen, who snatched an intercept and raced away to claim a memorable Maroons victory.
“That clip shows up every year around Origin time and I really feel for Brett Kimmorley,” Bowen said.
“But to score a try like that at Suncorp, it’s something that I will always remember.”
The final moments of Game One in 2005 never left Kimmorley’s mind either.
The Cronulla halfback didn’t watch the match back for over a decade and struggled to overcome the loss when he returned to Cronulla for the rest of the 2005 season.
“It caused massive scarring and doubt in my game for the whole season, I could never throw long which wasn’t what I was about, I always just played what was in front of me,” he said.
Kimmorley was dropped for the remainder of the series – won by the Blues 2-1 – but still struggled to get away from the Origin hype in the weeks that followed.
“I didn’t want to watch Game Two, so I went to a nice restaurant where I didn’t think they’d have it on,” he said.
“But then it was like, ‘Hey Brett, don’t sit over there, sit over here we’ve got the football on’, so I sort of had to watch it out of the corner of my eye.”
A holiday after the 2005 season helped Kimmorley find closure and ultimately led to an Origin recall for Game Two of the 2007 series.
The man they call ‘Noddy’ then missed the 2008 series before he was called on by Blues coach Craig Bellamy for the final game of the ’09 series, which NSW won 28-16 at Suncorp, going some way to erasing the bitter memories of 2005.
“It just goes to show the importance of backing yourself and training hard,” he said.
“Those games [in 2007 and 2009] were the most enjoyable Origins I played, because I’d lost the fear of failure.”
