At least until the game sorts itself out a bit and we see what limit he sets with the ruck, which Queensland dominated during their 16-10 win in Origin I in Sydney.

NSW coach Brad Fittler told the post-match media conference he wasn't happy with the ruck.

He clearly felt the Maroons had gotten away with slowing down the Blues' play-the-ball beyond what was a reasonable limit and should've been whacked with a few penalties.

During this week's lead-up to Origin II at Optus Stadium in Perth on Sunday night it emerged that Fittler had subsequently met with referees' boss Jared Maxwell to make his point about the ruck and also question what the NSW camp felt was some illegal kick pressure on halfback Nathan Cleary.

The two things are, of course, related.

The slower the play-the-ball, the better the defence can get set and the quicker they can get to the designated kicker when he's about to pump the ball downfield on the last tackle.

My view is the Maroons did a brilliant job in the ruck. I don't see how it could be viewed any other way.

They pushed the envelope a bit at times, but overall not outrageously. They anticipated they would be able to delay a bit in certain circumstances and they were proved right.

The Blues were generally a fraction quicker in getting off the tackled player and when their brains trust saw the way things were going during the game they probably should've got the team to adjust on the run and fight fire with fire rather than just complain about it afterwards.

I didn't see anything wrong with the pressure on Cleary either. Again, just a job well done.

The good thing is that Cleary, as his team's No,7, reacted exactly as you would've liked to have seen him react to the loss.

Cleary had a poor game, no doubt about it. His kicking, passing, running and decision-making were all off and he was the subject of much media and public criticism.

But while many people around him blasted the criticism as harsh, he made a point of coming out and owning the result.

That's what the best halves do and one thing you can be sure of is that - as thoroughly as he no doubt prepares already - he will have gone the extra step and prepared within an inch of his life for game two.

Anyway, now we wait to see how Klein reacts to the debate over the ruck. Who knows? He and his boss Maxwell might feel his judgement of the ruck was spot-on in Origin I and doesn't need to change at all.

Or they might feel he should speed it up a fraction and that if the players don't get on-board quickly they will get penalised.

Whichever way it goes, if one team cottons on quicker to how the ruck is being judged and deals with it better than the other then they're going to have an advantage. Just like Queensland did the first time around.

Lead-ups to Origin matches sure aren't what they used to be and there are multiple reasons for that.

There's no longer the likelihood of brawling and the potential for some other foul tactics, which could put combustible types on edge and result in some serious sledging of the opposition, prompting slanging matches, in the days ahead of the game.

Rival coaches Fittler and Queensland's Billy Slater are fairly reserved characters as well and certainly not the types to verbally savage someone just for the sake of it.

It's clear that the players are following the leads of their coaches as well.

I saw multiple television interviews of Slater this week during which interviewees threw him a curveball in the hope of getting him to say something controversial, but he just wouldn't bite.

It was the same in a couple of Maroons player interviews.

Plus, the old days of bonding sessions over a few or 20 beers that would kick-start Origin preparations once the players had gone into camp and sometimes lead to late-night dramas that resulted in massive fall-outs and screaming newspaper headlines are long gone.

The build-up is relatively genteel now. Even boring in some respects. There's not a lot to talk about when you get past the selection of the teams.

Origin is left to sell itself on the threat of a terrific contest between two star-studded teams and it still delivers on that front. Game one was a ripper and game two threatens to be just as good.

But while that is still enough for most people - and I'm one of them - it's clearly not enough for everybody or the television ratings wouldn't be down a bit in recent years on what they were like when blood and thunder was still a part of the equation.

Who wins? I said ahead of the series getting underway that it was shaping up as a tight one and that whichever team won game one I expected the other team to win game two and send it to a decider in Brisbane next month. I'll stick with that.

I've got a feeling NSW will lift under the pressure of a must-win game and do enough to get home in another close one.

But for that to happen they must do something to at least limit the impact of Maroons superstar Cameron Munster, who owned game one. He'll break the Blues' hearts all over again if they let him.