New South Wales won the first battle of this year’s State of Origin series yesterday – not on the football field, but around the selection table.

When he fronted the media after watching his Broncos lose to Manly on Sunday, Wayne Bennett responded to suggestions that Karmichael Hunt would be chosen at five-eighth over Scott Prince with what most people in Maroon territory must have been thinking yesterday.

“You guys are having a go at me .... it’s a gee-up isn’t it?” the super coach replied.

“I don’t think Queensland would be that silly personally.

“What are you going to do with Scott Prince ... what, he can’t play?”

Well Benny, it wasn’t a gee-up, we were that silly and apparently Queensland selectors don’t rate Prince as highly as what everyone else who follows the game does.

Hunt was named in the No.6 jersey yesterday to partner Johnathan Thurston in the halves in a week’s time in Game One.

It’s one of the worst selection decisions the Maroons have made since they decided to give Adrian Brunker a run.

Bennett watches Hunt play in his regular fullback role every week at club level.
Surely if anyone would know that putting “K” at six is “silly” it would be him.

Even more worrying is that Prince couldn’t even make it on the bench, meaning that if the Hunt experiment isn’t working, there really isn’t a confident Plan B.

If our halves misfire in the first half, then the best stop-gap option I can see is to bring PJ Marsh on from the bench to hooker, with Cameron Smith shifting to five-eighth.

Or perhaps move Greg Inglis from centre to five-eighth and put Karmichael at fullback, with Billy Slater shifting to wing and Brent Tate moving into the centres.

But why disrupt a backline that has been very settled the past couple of campaigns, apart from Slater?

Conversely, the Blues selectors have done a tremendous job.

Including Peter Wallace at halfback when first-choice option Kurt Gidley succumbed to injury on Monday night was a wise choice.

The decision to leave out Test forward Brent Kite and Origin stalwart Nathan Hindmarsh were also sound selections based on form, not on incumbency which the Maroons continue to favour.

Prince is arguably the in-form player in the NRL at the moment.

Some feel that Thurston and Prince in the same squad wouldn’t work because they both run the show like a dictatorship at club level.

But we won’t know until we give it a try.

And trust me, the sigh of relief that the Gold Coast Titans skipper wasn’t picked would have been deafening south of the Tweed.

What do you think? Did the Maroons selectors get the team right? Could their decisions cost Queensland victory in Game One? Who should have made it into the side and who should have been dumped?