Cameron Smith’s biggest Origin II fear? Rugby league’s greatest ‘liar’

Lie with your eyes. Fib with your feet.

If Api Koroisau does not have his playmaking philosophy slapped on a bumper sticker already, he should.

Because it’s enough to have the greatest No.9 of all time and Maroons icon Cameron Smith on edge.

“The way Api plays, and the way the game is being played with the extra set restarts and an open ruck, he could break Queensland open,” Smith said.

“He is a huge threat off the bench for the Queensland defence, especially if he’s coming on against tired defenders.

“Their control of the play-the-ball will have to be better when he comes on, or he really could be the key to unlocking [Nathan] Cleary and [Mitchell] Moses and the NSW outside backs.”

Koroisau is back in sky blue for his first Origin since 2023. And he’s being sized up in both state camps for the type of late-game impact Blayke Brailey had in game one after coming on for starting No.9 Reece Robson, albeit after the Maroons lost Kalyn Ponga and were defending a man down.

Smith is especially wary. Rugby league’s master ruck manipulator has long marvelled at how Koroisau has crafted a career out of what the Tigers skipper downplays as “just trying to buy half a second for whoever I’m passing the ball to.”

Koroisau makes it look and sound simple. But a slice of Smith’s commentary from Origin II, 2022 – which became a 44-12 Blues trouncing in Perth – is as instructive as any about the highlight plays in Koroisau’s kitbag.

“He’s putting a show on,” Smith, then Maroons assistant coach, said as Koroisau began to prise Queensland’s ruck defence apart.

Shown that footage again leading up to game two at the MCG, the most capped Maroon of all time explained how Koroisau’s deception at the ruck, an extra half a metre here, half a second there, stacks up in the Origin arena.

Game recognises game after all.

“Api’s always facing one way, [then goes] down the other,” Smith said.

“Just his little subtle movements where he’ll be facing right, pick up a ball, have a little show, just have a little look out there, just move his hips a little bit, then come back the other way.

“He does this all in that one motion, right? And an Origin defensive line is as quick as it gets.

“They want to get up and get stuck into the ball carrier or the half that he’s going to pass to, but once Api shows and comes out those first few steps, they have to hesitate a little bit.

“These two Origin plays [from 2022], it looks pretty standard with how he brings Teddy [James Tedesco] and then Isaah Yeo onto the ball. Api’s little plays get each of them up over the advantage line and isolates a defender. That’s how you build a game as a dummy half.”

Yeo has seen both sides of Koroisau’s work – as a Panthers teammate through two premierships, and since 2023 when he moved to Wests Tigers, as an especially wary opposition defender.

“It can actually throw you in attack as a teammate, how crafty he is,” Yeo said. “It can sometimes put you off given how much time he actually gives you.

“The way he pulls markers apart and gets you onto the ball, it’s so underrated. It’s potentially a real point of difference for us, especially late in the game.”

In his 13th season, and after 244 NRL games, Koroisau has a “best of″⁣ hits compilation that does justice to the trickery he draws on in every attacking set.

An Izack Tago try against Cronulla in 2022 – set up by Koroisau’s faked kick and dummy to a bullocking Viliame Kikau – is a thing of beauty.

Three weeks earlier he snuck over for a match-winner against the Roosters.

Victor Radley had belted no less than James Fisher-Harris onto his back the tackle prior, which Koroisau then used to his advantage in angling his body to pass right, looking that way as well, and then exploding low and left, straight through Radley and Tedesco.

Even with the Tigers battling at the wrong end of the ladder since Koroisau arrived, he has still regularly pushed Queensland and Australian hooker Harry Grant for billing as the game’s most creative dummy half.

“It’s come with a lot of work – I don’t have to think about those little fakes or lying with your feet any more,” Koroisau said.

“I did when I was younger, but the deception – looking one way and going the other, trying to present something different to the opposition defence – that’s now a habit in my game because of the work I did when I was younger.

“Moments when the markers are offside or out of play, those moments sort themselves out a fair bit. Most of the time I’m trying to buy half a second at the ruck, trying to buy a moment of time to help build a set and build momentum”.