Queensland coach Billy Slater said he knew from the moment he told Tom Dearden he would be making his State of Origin debut the Maroons were “going to be alright”.
Dearden and veteran Corey Oates were elevated into the side late Friday after Cameron Munster and Murray Tualagi tested positive to COVID-19.
Slater said the Queensland team immediately went into lockdown, and once PCR results came back, selectors made their decision.
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“I remember going to knock on Tom Dearden’s door and and the conversation I had with him, I left knowing that we were okay,” Slater said.
“The confidence he gave me, he said to me ‘I won’t let you down’. And he didn’t.
“We went out and we probably had two of our best training sessions after that. The preparation that he and Corey Oates put in was incredible.”
On his Origin debut, Dearden set up Val Holmes for the first try of the game, made 29 tackles at 90 per cent efficiency and ran 103m.
Skipper Daly Cherry-Evans revealed he and Dearden went and had coffee together to discuss their role within the team.
Cherry-Evans said he changed his own role to make Dearden’s transition easier.
“He asked as many questions as he could to just feel comfortable,” he said.
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“I knew straight away from the smiles and the nods he was giving me that he was going to be alright.
“Once he heard how I wanted to play and once I listened to how he wanted to play, I knew were were going to be fine.
“He knows exactly what his game looks like, and what his best game looks like and he sticks to that. He just trusted that everyone around him was going to do their job, and that’s what you’ve got to do at this level.
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“You trust everyone around you and you do your job – he did his fantastically.”
Slater said the decision to move Dearden in to the No.6 spot was easy.
“Tom has been a part of every camp that we were in this year. He knows what we’ve been focusing on, he prepares as good as anyone, and he’s a tough competitor,” he said.
“He was in the camp for a reason because he’s playing great football. He’s a great defender, he organises his area, and we saw that with the try he set up for Val.
“I knew we’d lose a bit with Cameron Munster, but Tom Dearden has got different strengths to Cameron Munster and I was more focusing on what we did have rather than what we didn’t have.”
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