New South Wales’ long wait for Origin glory finally ended at the close of Game 2 when the Blues tasted the sweet nectar of success, defeating Queensland in a match where neither victor nor vanquished scored more points than Germany netted goals versus Brazil this morning.

And so it is that tonight third match of the 2014 series is a dead rubber, although there is no such thing in Origin, with New South Wales seeking the Blue rinse and Queensland aiming to avoid a marooning on the island clean sweeps.

The match is being played at Brisbane’s Suncorp Stadium (nee Lang Park) and kick-off is scheduled for just after 8:00pm local time. That’s the same time in New South Wales (except Broken Hill), Victoria, Tasmania and the Northern Territory; 7:30pm in South Australia, the Northern Territory and Broken Hill and 6:00pm in Western Australia.

The first HD broadcast of the match for non-Perth residents will be on Fox Sports 1 (Foxtel Channel 501) at 10:30pm in the Eastern States and Territory and 10:00pm in the Central State and Territory.

One of Channel Nine’s enduring peccadilloes is to only broadcast the match in HD into that great basin of rugby league evangelism, Western Australia. The good people of the West can watch the match in sparkling clarity on GEM while all other centres must put up with an SD broadcast on Nine and its affiliates.

It certainly seems like a long time ago that Channel Nine showed the big game in HD and in 3D. It was 2010. My personal view is that Channel Nine is doing a great disservice to the TV manufacturers and retailers by only showing the game in SD in the two states that passionately follow this sport.

Companies like Samsung, LG, Panasonic and Sony (yes, Sony too!) invests millions of dollars to make great panels and when you show world class sport on these screens in beautiful HD — like Brazil vs Germany, for instance — it looks absolutely spectacular. When you show the game in SD, it looks like a damp squib.

If you’re hosting your mates for dinner, a few drinks and the Origin on the big screen, everyone will be squinting as the screen juts and jumps and blurs and blubbers — sport looks especially poor in SD — and this certainly won’t encourage anyone to go out to a Harvey Norman or a JB Hi-Fi and part with their hard earned for a brand new model so they can host the next party.

Roughly eight hours after the conclusion of this match, Argentina will take on the Netherlands in the second semifinal of the 2014 FIFA World Cup. The winner will get to meet Germany in the final on Monday morning. While SBS’s studio coverage of the World Cup has been absolutely abysmal, it has, at the very least, shown every game in HD. Now this shouldn’t be a source of praise in 2014 but “Praise be to SBS!” because it is quite clear that not every network considers HD coverage of sport a necessity. This game starts at 6:00 in the Eastern states and territory, 5:30am in the Central state and territory and 4:00am in the West.

Patrick’s Tips:

New South Wales by 2 points
First Try: Ryan Hoffman
Man of the Match: Robbie Farah
Man of the Series: Paul Gallan

Argentina 1 – 2 Netherlands