As well as their not having a television, a memory, or any interest in recent Origin history, it would help if this new band of the undefeated did not play in the NRL. The sad fact is that not having been beaten by Queensland doesn’t mean you haven’t been beaten by Queenslanders. Queensland’s second biggest city, Melbourne, is of course the reigning NRL champion. The good news for Fittler is that Melbourne won the 2017 title with Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk. The bad news is that they also did it with Billy Slater, Will Chambers, Cameron Munster, Felise Kaufusi and, um, Tim Glasby. New South Wales players who represent the Storm have such an inferiority complex, they wait until the Queenslanders are finished before contemplating jumping into the hot tub. And then they wait for the Kiwis. Even Craig Bellamy had such an inferiority complex towards his in-house Queenslanders that he ran from the Blues coaching job after a short ingloriousness.

But enough of these gloomy thoughts. Think positive! New South Wales, that veritable nursery of rugby league workhorses, boasts a rich vein of back-rowers. We still have it over Queensland in the department of willing triers and indistinguishable interchanges. If you need an anonymous hit-up or a three-man tackle, you call for a New South Welshman. When we have worn out the defeated workhorses – Paul Gallen, Josh Jackson, Trent Merrin, James Tamou, Aaron Woods – we have a new stock of undefeated prototypes rolling off the production line. Jack de Belin, Regan Campbell-Gillard and Tariq Sims have more going for them than culturally confusing names. None has been defeated in Origin. Bring them in, Freddie. In the centres, where the Blues have also enjoyed a traditional strength, Latrell Mitchell and James Roberts did a fine job last week in playing each other both into and out of Origin contention. Significantly, both are undefeated in Origin. Pick up the phone and make that call, Frederick!

But the roller-coaster is about to dive again. Just as we begin to bristle with pride at our strength in the battering-ram department, we recall that we have not only out-battered but out-rammed Queensland each year since 2007. Unfortunately, Origins are won by brains. And central nervous systems. In other words, by spines. And New South Wales still have to show some spine.

In an all-NRL spine, who would be the top hookers? You would have to get past four Queenslanders (Smith, Andrew McCullough, Jake Granville, Jake Friend), a Kiwi and an Englishman (Isaac Luke, Josh Hodgson) before you got to your first Blue. It sounds like arriving very late for a fight. In the halves, you’re getting to your Fifth or Sixth All-NRL pairing (behind Cronk, Johnathan Thurston, Ben Hunt, Gareth Widdop, Cameron Munster, Shaun Johnson, Daly Cherry-Evans, Anthony Milford, on a good day Kieran Foran and Moses Mbye) before you’re discussing a Blue. And at fullback, Tom Trbojevic is a dead-set genius if you’re only watching the highlights reel. But if you’re watching whole matches, this is a star of the future who is still in development. You should see some of the things Tom does at Manly…and then you should see some of the other things he does at Manly.

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Fittler needs men who know nothing of all this. If brains win Origin, we must change the conversation. Fittler needs men of spirit and skill and character, but most of all men of complete innocence. Away with defeatism! Away with thinking! ‘I have told you before that I am not that clever,’ Fittler told our Andrew Webster this week, thus revealing how he snared the job. Further, he asserted that ‘you would have to be a psychologist or a mathematician’ to work out what Phil Gould was saying half the time. Exactly! Leave it to psychology and mathematics to decode the meaning of ‘No, no, no, no, no.’ Undefeatism requires ‘Yes, yes, yes, yes, yes.’

So when Fittler unveils his team on Monday, let us hope for a wealth of inexperience. Young men who, never having been beaten by Queensland before, won’t realise when they are about to be beaten again. Whose greatest quality is, like Socrates, that they know that they know nothing. Brawn has failed, and our brains have not been up to it. Let’s see if Fittler’s third way, the path of undefeatism, can crack this puzzle.