Maroons freshen up: Walters makes camp change ahead of 2019 Origin series

[Nergal]

 

Camp Maroon will no longer be at Sanctuary Cove.

Kevin Walters confirmed on Tuesday that the luxury five-star Gold Coast digs where the likes of Johnathan Thurston, Cameron Smith and Billy Slater having been plotting the demise of the Blues since 2014 has been traded in for West Brisbane.

Specifically the Queenslanders will train out of Davies Park — home of the Souths Logan Magpies.

“We’ve really enjoyed our time at Sanctuary Cove over the past few years, but we just felt the need to freshen things up a bit,” Walters said.

“One of my responsibilities as the coach of the team is to provide the best possible environment for our players to prepare for an Origin game.

“And now that we’ve got some new faces in the team, the time is right to start afresh ahead of another challenging series.”

The Maroons moved to Sanctuary Cove in 2014 from Palmer Coolum Resort on the Sunshine Coast, where Mal Meninga and his troops orchestrated five straight series wins.

Of course, they then lost that 2014 series to the Blues ending an eight-series undefeated stretch.

They bounced back to claim the next three in succession before this year’s loss prompted Walters to freshen up his squad’s preparation.

It’s the latest strategic move from Walters in his quest to wrest back the Origin shield from NSW, after last month announcing Justin Hodges and Petero Civoniceva as assistant coach and team manager, and fellow Origin greats Thurston and Slater would be brought into the fold as consultants.

“It’s very humbling to be associated with that side,” Hodges told foxsports.com.au in November.

“This has only been my third year away from the game in terms of playing, so it’s a tremendous amount of faith shown by Kevvy Walters to have me in there as assistant coach.

“Kevvy rang me the other day and told me so I had a meeting with him. He said he believed in me and reckoned I could offer something to the younger generation of players.

“It’s probably come a bit earlier than I expected, but I’ve learnt a lot over the past two years with the Under 20s and having blokes like Princey (Scott Prince), Lote (Tuqiri) and Paul Dyer around me has helped as well.