THE battle for a clean-sweep may have been lost, but Queensland still won the State of Origin series war and a clear moral victory with a lesson in sportsmanship after being handed an 18-14 loss by NSW in Game 3 at ANZ Stadium.

Queensland, the series and Origin shield already in their keeping, had been aiming for a slice of history with the first series whitewash since 2010.

Instead, the Blues – playing to farewell their captain Paul Gallen – salvaged something from yet another wretched series for NSW with a victory handed to them by a desperate try to Blues centre Michael Jennings 78 seconds from fulltime.

Only four minutes earlier, it looked as if Darius Boyd had produced a similar miracle for the Maroons, with his fingertip control of a wayward bomb seeing him score and kick Queensland into the lead.

It was a lead conjured from Queensland’s deep reserves of courage and determination, given they were nearly blown off the park by the referees’ whistles.

The penalty count finished 12-3 in NSW’s favour, but just before halftime the tally stood at a barely believable 9-1 when Cooper Cronk was sent to the sin bin for a professional foul.

Sadly, the referees were to have more influence two minutes after the break, when Blues prop Andrew Fifita was astoundingly awarded a try by the video bunker, despite officials conceding Jennings had been off-side and involved in the play leading up to the try.

Queensland skipper Cameron Smith was forthright in his opinion after the game that the crucial decision, which gave NSW a 12-4 lead, was wrong.

“My understanding is that if there’s a person inside the 10 metres when a try is scored and he is front of the kicker, that’s offside,” Smith said.

“Last year, we had a try taken off us where Matt Gillett was offside after Johnathan Thurston scored a try.

“There’s human beings involved, and they are going to make errors, but we have to get that ruling right.

“To put that much effort in and for something like that to happen, it’s hard to take.”

To add insult to injury, the Maroons were left fuming after the match when Blues players turned their backs and walked off during Smith’s acceptance speech as series-winning captain – an incredibly poor display of sportsmanship given the Maroons had waited to listen to Gallen’s speech as Blues skipper.

“I think that is extremely disrespectful,” a rightfully agitated Queensland coach Kevin Walters said after the game.

“It is something we wouldn’t do,” Smith added, barely able to control his anger.

Gallen, who earlier in the week had accused Queenslanders of being bad winners, said after the game he

“didn’t notice” the embarrassing, ungracious snub his team had delivered to his rival captain.

It was a shabby postscript to the series that had seen Walters come into his own as a coach by winning his first series in charge of the Maroons.

In the process it lit the fuse for next year’s series, which will have two games at Suncorp Stadium – lengthening NSW’s odds of holding the shield they have won once in the past 11 series.

Smith was again Queensland’s best player in Game 3, and was a deserved winner of the Wally Lewis Medal as the player of the series.

NSW 18 (Frizell, Fifita, Jennings tries; Maloney 2, Gallen goals) d QLD 14 (Inglis, Cooper, Boyd tries; Thurston goal)