The Maroons ran in five tries to the Blues one but it wasn’t until the final 10 minutes that the scoreboard truly reflected the balance of the match.
Despite a first half dominated by Queensland it was NSW who opened the scoring with a penalty after Hodgkinson was hit high by Ben Teo.
On the stroke of half-time the Maroons finally got their reward when Cameron Smith got on the end of a grubber from Daly Cherry-Evans.
They didn’t muck about in the second half as Billy Slater found the line soon after the break after a flat pass from Justin Hodges.
Just as with the first Jonathan Thurston converted and it was 12-2 – the biggest score of this tight series already.
With a touch over 20 minutes to go Smith’s penalty extended the lead to a full two converted tries with the Blues hardly threatening their line.
It wasn’t over though.
Josh Dugan pegged four points back and Hodgkinson added the extras to keep the Blues well and truly in it.
But the Queensland bombardment was soon to hit the target in an almighty blow-out.
Darius Boyd found the line in the 72nd minute, Thurston converted and NSW attempted a short kick-off to make a game of it.
Two minutes later though Aiden Guerra was over and QLD had a 26-8 lead.
The wheels had fallen off the Blues by this point and Cooper Cronk added insult to injury with his own try two minutes from time to make the final score 32-8.
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