“I PLAYED Origin,” Ricky Stuart told a gathering of all things sky blue at the 2012 Brad Fittler Medal.

“The bloke who is about to coach you owned it.”

Phil Gould declared afterwards that a truer word had never been spoken about Laurie Daley, Origin, or anything ever.

But what if now, almost 30 years since his 1989 playing debut, Daley is done?

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Because it’s never too early to talk footy at its most feral and ferocious, and because it’s not the modern game without contract conjecture, this was put to the off-contract Blues coach more than once at Monday’s series launch.

His repeated response across multiple interviews amounting to ‘I know what I’m doing in the future, but I can’t, or won’t be telling you’, raised eyebrows.

So too the uncomfortable, inescapable fact he has steered the big Blue ship to five wins across four series, albeit against an era of Queensland champions.

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Were it not for Michael Jennings’ miracle in Origin III last year — a try missed by Daley as he made his way downstairs, and a celebration missed by Aaron Woods as he made his way to online immortality — we might not even be having this conversation.

Daley knows this.

A 3-0 whitewash last year and the NSWRL’s wideranging review afterwards may well have given another recommendation.

A 1-4 record at the end of this year’s series — “it could also be 2-3 remember” — and any discussion on Daley’s contract will be a brief one.

Again, the coach knows this.

“It’s something I’d love to do for a long time, but I don’t get a say in that,” Daley told foxsports.com.au recently.

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“(An extension) is not something, a stage or a position that you initiate or chase for me. That’s a call for the NSWRL to make.

“I don’t look at it as a job. It’s not a job, it’s something I love. If you get this opportunity to coach NSW, you’d do it for nothing. It’s a wonderful position we’re in.

“Of course I’d love to do it as long as I possibly can, but I can’t worry about that.”

Of course, Daley does have a say. Win or lose, but no draw, he could always walk away.

Microphones on or off, Daley is coy when asked about any NRL coaching ambitions.

Origin coaches Kevin Walters and Laurie Daley after game three last year. Picture: Gregg Porteous Source: News Corp Australia

NSWRL boss Dave Trodden matches him when quizzed on the Blues coaching role beyond 2017.

“One of the lessons I’ve learned is that by even engaging in the conversation, that can become really distracting,” Trodden says.

“It’s not really a discussion I want to entertain at the moment because my total focus, and Laurie’s total focus, is on winning Origin this year.”

In years previous, Daley has taken series losses incredibly hard. After his first in 2013, Daley’s body gave out and he wound up bedridden for weeks with shingles. Paul Gallen had to convince him to come back the next year.

Daley takes his ownership seriously. So too the 2016 campaign, but with the Blues next generation taking another few important steps on the grandest stage, his stake in the contest alters slightly.

Daley will take the Blues preparations to Kingscliffe in 2017. Picture: Gregg Porteous Source: News Corp Australia

“The aftermath was tough, but not as tough as those other ones,” Daley says.

“I think that’s because we’ve been able to genuinely build a team over the last couple of years.

“You’ve got months to dissect a series, it’s not a regular season. ‘Next week’, your next game is actually nine months away after game three.

“That can be a good or a bad thing. The disappointment is there, but you do move on from it eventually, and you get to work.

“Now we’ve got a good crop of young guys coming through that we’ve set NSW up for a genuinely good period, and they’re at a stage where they can play their best footy for NSW.”

Stuart’s right. Daley owns this Origin side: the strides made, shortfalls, warts and all.

No vacancies at Gus’s inn

Phil Gould has shut up shop at Penrith, never mind every player confirming “rugby league is a business these days.”

Anthony Griffin and Phil Gould don’t plan on recruiting any more players to Penrith. Picture: Gregg Porteous Source: News Corp Australia

Gould says the club won’t spend a cent at market over the next 12 months, even with each club’s top playing squad increasing from 25 to 30 in 2018.



“All 30 players are in our building, we don’t need to recruit next year,” Gould told Sky Sports Big Breakfast on Tuesday morning.

“When we get to that top 30, around 26 of them will have debuted with Penrith or have come through the Penrith development system … the aim is to keep them together over the next two or three years.”

The Panthers have been the most active club on the retention front by some margin, locking in most all of their brightest stars until at least the end of 2019.

They’re operating on a basis that the salary cap will rise to $10 million — more than a 25 per cent increase on its current limit — over the next two seasons.

We can only assume the club has now settled after their bid for Brisbane’s Ben Hunt was knocked back in January.

Dean Whare, Dallin Watene-Zelezniak, Viliame Kikau, Sione Katoa, Sitaleki Akuola and Corey Harawira remain without deals beyond the end of 2017, though a development with at least DWZ is understood to be close at hand.