Meninga hopes referee has learned
Queensland coach Mal Meninga says he hopes referee Tony Archer learned something from his first State of Origin in Sydney.
The Queensland camp were unhappy with Archer's failure to penalise NSW's markers as they smothered the Maroons and shut down hooker Cameron Smith's running game out of dummy half in the opening game in Sydney last month.
While Meninga has no problems with Archer blowing the whistle in Origin II next week, he said he hoped he'd learned some lessons from Sydney.
Queensland didn't adjust to Archer's lenient refereeing of the ruck and Meninga promised that would not happen at Suncorp Stadium with the series on the line.
"Mr Archer will probably learn from that I'd say, it was his first one," said Meninga when asked if he had a problem with the referee.
"Hopefully he'll referee both sides and hopefully we'll get a fair rub of the green.
"I think Mr Archer is the best referee in the competition so we weren't overly concerned about Tony Archer being the referee.
"We were concerned about his 10 metres and his marker work.
"I think he was fairly lenient on the night."
Archer will have a frenzied Maroon crowd to cope with in Origin II who will ride him for the entire 80 minutes.
He can thank NSW forward Willie Mason for firing them up even more after saying the Blues would have to contend with "65,000 (sic) nutbag redneck Queenslanders supporting them and going mad and hating us".
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