Blues prop Payne Haas has been cleared to play in Wednesday’s Origin series opener while Blues officials will wait until match-day morning to make a final call on Stephen Crichton’s fitness after the Bulldogs centre sent an injury scare through the camp on Monday.
NSW coach Laurie Daley said on Tuesday he was weighing up whether to train behind closed doors for the remainder of the series – without any public or media in attendance – after footage was published by this masthead showing Crichton hobbling from the paddock with a quad injury.
NSW rounded out their preparations on a balmy morning at Suncorp Stadium, with the immediate concern the availability of right centre and Canterbury captain Crichton.
South Sydney’s Campbell Graham, who has been in camp all week, will start the game if Crichton is ruled out.
“Payne will play, but with ‘Critta’ [Crichton] we’ll see how he goes tomorrow,” Daley said. “It’s a cork. There’s no strain or anything like that. We’re just trying to control the swelling, and we’ll see how he is in the morning.
A final call on Stephen Crichton will be made on Wednesday morning.Credit: Getty Images
“It will be the usual icing, rest, elevation, all the sort of stuff you probably don’t want to talk about [this far out from a game].
“I think players these days are good, and they won’t take a risk if they think they will let anyone down. The fact is we’ll see how he is, we’re confident he’ll play, but if he’s not there, Campbell comes straight into the team.
“The good thing for us is we’ve had Campbell in all week. It’s not like we’ve had to bring in someone from the outside who hasn’t had any preparation at all. He’s a right centre as well.
“If anything happens to Critta and he can’t play, we’re confident Campbell will do more than a good job.”
Blues officials are determined to find out how vision of Crichton made its way into the media on Monday when a session against Queensland Cup side Wynnum Manly at Ballymore was meant to be a private session.
They were worried how much other footage may have been filmed, and that it could even find its way into the hands of the Maroons.
“When it’s a private session, you’re always disappointed when stuff like that gets leaked,” Daley said. “That’s not my main focus at the moment. We will look at that when we do our review after game one.
“We’ll go through what we can do better. We might stop people coming to training. We don’t want to, but it might be part of what we need to do, and we’ll limit access. But that will be decided after we do that review.
“If you invite people in, you know the rules when you come in. But that’s not my focus at all. I’m not worried about that at this stage. That will be taken care of after the game.”
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