Stephen Crichton is in the conversation

On Wednesday morning, the New South Wales physios asked Stephen Crichton whether he would be fit to play in the State of Origin opener later that day. Crichton had played through a groin injury for his club, Canterbury Bulldogs, in his final game before joining the Blues’ camp, only to limp out of training on Monday with a quad injury. But he only had to say one word to convince the medical staff that he wouldn’t let them down at Lang Park.

“He said he was mad," Blues coach Laurie Daley laughed after his side won the opener in Queensland 18-6. "So that's obviously good."

As the eyes of the rugby league world focused on one of the biggest and certainly most-hyped fixtures in the sport, Crichton was once again in his element. In a game dominated by the Blues, ‘Critter’ was typically excellent at right centre.

The result was meant to be decided by the battle on the other side of the field, where Sydney Roosters centre Robert Toia was making his Maroons debut after only ten NRL appearances. The Blues threw plenty at Toia — he made 24 tackles in comparison to fellow centre Hamiso Tabuai-Fidow’s seven on the opposite flank — and got their reward in the first half when winger Brian To’o went over in that corner of the field. But Toia largely held his own and even got his own back by providing the pass for Xavier Coates to score Queensland’s only try of the night.

Instead, the game was won and lost on Crichton’s edge, where the Blues scored three of their four tries; Crichton gliding past Valentine Holmes and attracting the attention of three more defenders before feeding Zac Lomax for the opening try. Likewise, he lived up to his reputation as the best defensive centre in the game by reducing Tubuai-Fidow — who averages more than a try a game in Origin — to perhaps his quietest display at this level. While towering prop Payne Haas deservedly won the Player of the Match award, Crichton also received plenty of praise, with some even labelling it the defining performance of his career to date.

I hate to be that guy (*whispers*: I don’t really), but can we just burst the bubble of Origin hype at least until Game Two next month? This wasn’t a great Origin. The Blues simply have a much better side than Queensland right now, even when they’re not playing their best. "New South Wales, if they were on tonight, they win by forty or fifty. They left so many tries out there,” their legendary former scrum-half Andrew Johns said afterwards.

As for the defining performance of Crichton’s career — as good as he was, it might not even be in his top five. That’s no slight. That’s because he already has a resumé that suggests he should be in the conversation for not just the best centre in the world, but the best rugby league player on the planet.

At his previous club Penrith Panthers, he scored in four consecutive Grand Finals, winning three, including a title-winning intercept in 2021 and a starring role alongside Nathan Cleary in the Hollywood comeback against Brisbane in 2023.

Departing Penrith after that victory over Brisbane, he was surprisingly named captain of Canterbury before he’d even played a game for his new club. The Bulldogs had finished 15th in the NRL the season prior to Critter’s arrival. Under his leadership, they finished 6th in his first season to reach the play-offs. The more he grows into the role, the more he drags his teammates with him. The Bulldogs are currently leading the competition, helped in no small part by Crichton going supersonic in turning a 20-0 half-time deficit at the 2nd-place Canberra Raiders into a 32-20 victory. When Crichton left the squad ahead of the Origin opener, the Bulldogs were dismantled 44-8 by the Dolphins.

Again, we might still be scraping the surface. ABC’s excellent writer Nick Campton dubbed Samoa’s thrilling World Cup semi-final upset over England in London ‘The Stephen Crichton Game’. Facing a team that had annihilated Samoa 60-6 in the group stage, Crichton made a mockery of a competition scheduled to give England an ‘easy’ route to the final, scoring two tries and kicking the only drop-goal of his career to win the match in golden point.

In a sport dominated by hype, that might be the only thing Crichton lacks. With centre no longer considered a glamour position, he can be overlooked in favour of a dominating forward like Payne Haas or a scheming half-back who guides a team around the pitch like Nathan Cleary. He’s quiet and softly spoken rather than brash and controversial like Latrell Mitchell. When he was called by former Blues coach Brad Fittler to be told he was being picked for Origin for the first time in 2021, he was in the car giving his mum a lift to church.

But the hype around other players is made to look just that when you see Crichton gliding so gracefully around the pitch, playing his best rugby in the biggest moments of the biggest games, commanding the respect of his peers with a gravitational pull of sheer class. Most scarily of all, he’s still only 24 years old. If Stephen Crichton isn’t the best player in the world right now, then it might only be a matter of time. ⬧