The only common theme is that there is no common theme. Asking Queensland players about how they produced the most-complete Origin performance of all time brings the same sort of response as if you asked them to go and catch a unicorn.

Blinking. Head shaking. Sheer befuddlement. None of them can clearly illustrate the factors that produced the 52-6 hiding of the Blues in Brisbane. Even now, the fact that it went down at all takes a serious amount of digestion.

Some of them can pinpoint moments where they knew something special was brewing at Suncorp Stadium, such as Matt Scott, who said when NSW were pounding the Queensland line early, he felt like he could tackle them all night and not let them pass.

Others, such as Johnathan Thurston, had their heads buried so far in the game that the magnitude of the victory and the virtually faultless execution only began to dawn once they had shaken hands and returned to the dressing rooms.

"We were thinking straight afterwards ... how did that happen? I'd never experienced anything like that before. It was all new to us. Those types of games don't happen ... ever... in Origin," Thurston told Fairfax Media.

"You don't think about that at the time ... you always just think about your job. It wasn't until the final siren had gone and you were sitting in the sheds with a beer. It was amazing to be a part of that. We prepared well but you can never go into a match thinking it will turn out like that."

Scott, bred in baked-dirt country around Longreach, looks bulletproof most of the time but felt 10-feet tall in the early exchanges.

"Things were going our way ... we started the game really well. I remember that NSW had a bit of possession early on in our half and on our tryline," Scott recalls. "We had to defend a couple of sets in a row and I remember feeling very comfortable and that they just weren't going to break our line.

"When we got the ball back, we started to score some points. Everything came off for us. It was special. I still think I haven't quite digested it. It was crazy ... you don't see that at club level too often let alone Origin. It was one of those nights."

Scott said the Cameron Smith-60 Minutes incident was part of the magic potion - "I think it certainly added to the motivation. We're a very tight-knit group. We felt for him" - but not everyone remembers it playing such a major role in the preparation."

"Who knows what happened? If we could bottle that, we'd be millionaires. We'd be selling it for the rest of our lives. It was a night where everything just clicked and went right for us. It took a good few days afterwards to sit back and realise what we had done, the enormity of it all," said Sam Thaiday.

"It really did feel like everything was nearly perfect ... sometimes that's a good thing and sometimes that's a bad thing when you are sitting in the sheds at half-time. You can get way too far ahead of yourself.

"But as a coach, if you ever wanted to show a team how to play an 80-minute game, that would be it."

And on the Smith incident manifesting on the field: "No, I think the biggest thing for us was that we were so disappointed in the way we played in Melbourne. That wasn't us. We were caught up in a lot of BS and didn't play the type of football we had built our legacy on.

"That game three was us releasing a bit of that frustration. There were a few different factors, not just what happened to Cam during that week."