After New South Wales won the last match of the 2009 State of Origin series, Craig Bellamy sat them in a circle and said, more or less, ‘Hold onto this moment until next year because tonight you proved you can beat them, and if you can get yourselves back into this frame of mind you'll win next year's series.'

It's been a long time - four escalatingly painful years - since NSW won a State of Origin series, and Bellamy could also have told his 2009 team that they allowed themselves to be bluffed out of winning the games that counted last year. They were good enough, but didn't quite believe it when it mattered.

So much has changed in a few months, however, that the Blues will improbably start this year's series as favourites. Injury, poor form and fitness concerns have taken the shine off Queensland's glittering backline. Israel Folau and Justin Hodges are hurt, Karmichael Hunt is learning new sports, Johnathan Thurston's shoulder, if not as buggered as it seemed, is not good either, and Darren Lockyer's form has been posing the chicken-and-egg question of whether the Broncos are going so wretchedly because Lockyer is, or vice versa. Greg Inglis has made a slow start to the season, although he is too good not to come good. Only Billy Slater and Darius Boyd are close to playing at their best. In the forwards, meanwhile, Steve Price and Dallas Johnson will be more conspicuous by their absence than they ever were on the field.

If history is any guide, though, NSW will still find a way to lose. There's just something about Queensland. That aside, Bellamy's problem is that the team he sat with last July for that special intimate moment will not, and should not, bear much resemblance to the team he coaches this year.

The winning NSW team from Origin III last year had eight new faces from Origin II. It was an emergency selection of trusted veterans. Its attack revolved around Canterbury's Brett Kimmorley and Michael Ennis, and Cronulla's Trent Barrett. Penrith's Trent Waterhouse, Manly's Josh Perry, Melbourne's Brett White and Souths' Craig Wing were other old heads brought in as stopgap measures. It was a desperate, conservatively-chosen team, reflecting a situation where the Blues had to batten down the hatches and try to scramble one win to save face.

But the worst result, in a way, was for that team to succeed, because it leaves Bellamy with a conflict between loyalty to those players and a certain knowledge that they are not the best to take into this year's series.

Some absences from that team will be automatic. Wing has left the code, while David Williams and Kurt Gidley are injured. In the backs, only Jarryd Hayne is a certainty. Centres Michael Jennings and Josh Morris will be in a three-into-two contest with Jamie Lyon. The forwards are anyone's guess, with Anthony Watmough and Ben Creagh the likeliest survivors from that team. By the end of last year, Ryan Hoffman, Nathan Hindmarsh and Robbie Farah had overtaken the Origin incumbents in their positions on the Kangaroos tour. Farah's dynamism for the Wests Tigers makes him a sure pick ahead of Ennis in the crucial dummy-half's role, but for the rest it's pretty much a matter of shutting the eyes and throwing out a net. Paul Gallen always seems to get picked for these things and I don't know why, but assume the coach and selectors know something nobody else does.

In any case, forward packs in Origin tend to cancel each other out. Big games are won at numbers six and seven, and it's the stability and supremacy of Lockyer and Thurston, compared with NSW's moveable feast, that have secured the past four Origins. NSW still hasn't replaced Andrew Johns, and that's the beginning and the end of their problem.

Here is where NSW might pay for having chosen the oldest-ever halves combination for Origin III last year. Kimmorley and Barrett are even older this year, and are playing like it. But if they were one-use-only agents for that match, who's to replace them? NSW had tried Jarred Mullen, Mitchell Pearce, Peter Wallace, Terry Campese, Greg Bird and Braith Anasta in the halves in the previous five matches before going back to the old faithfuls. Which way do they go this time? If it's youth, flair and pure talent, they might pick Pearce and Campese, or Parramatta's Daniel Mortimer. Or they could try a blend of young and old, such as Kimmorley-Jamie Soward or Mullen-Barrett. At Souths, John Sutton looks like a genius playing behind Sam Burgess. (And on that matter, why can't NSW pick Burgess? He's as much a New South Welshman as Inglis and Folau are Queenslanders.) Soward and Ben Hornby, behind the Dragons pack, rule the park.

The halves are the absolutely crucial selection, and the chopping and changing over the past four years has been a cause, as much as a result, of four series losses. Six and seven are where the attacking ideas come from, and without ideas NSW can find any number of ways to lose to Queensland, whoever they put on the field. The recent problem has been that the selectors have had too many ideas and the players they have chosen too few.

So, IMHO, here it is. I won't pick a Queensland team because availability of players is still too uncertain, and besides, given the keys to the city, I'd insist that Inglis and Folau actually play for their state of origin. But anyway, that's an argument for another day.

My Blues team is chosen on the basis of gift rather than graft, enterprise rather than entrenchment.

Fullback: Jarryd Hayne (Parramatta)

Wings: Brett Morris (St George Illawarra), Josh Morris (Canterbury)

Centres: Michael Jennings (Penrith), Jamie Lyon (Manly)

Five-eighth: Terry Campese (Canberra)

Half: Mitchell Pearce (Roosters)

Lock: Glenn Stewart (Manly)

Second-row: Anthony Watmough (Manly), Ben Creagh (St George Illawarra)

Props: Brett White (Melbourne), Michael Weyman (St George Illawarra)

Hooker: Robbie Farah (Wests Tigers)

Bench: Jamie Soward (St George Illawarra), Nathan Hindmarsh (Parramatta), Keith Galloway (Wests Tigers), John Sutton (Souths).

Eighteenth man: Preston Campbell (Gold Coast).

And yes, I know, no Anthony Laffranchi, no Justin Poore, no Gallen, no Bird, no Brent Kite, no Hoffman, no Gidley, no Waterhouse or Luke Lewis or Luke O'Donnell. Don't worry, if this team loses they'll all be in for Origin II.