Among Brisbane Broncos fans, lock Corey Parker has just about secured legendary status. He’s something of a sneaky legend though, and to many it might sound a weird call to make.
How can such a player be labelled a legend?
But his career stats, as well as his play over the last five years, put some meat on the bones of this claim.
He’s a one club player, is third on the club’s point-scoring list (he’s a lock remember), is third for games played with 268, behind only legendary halves Allan Langer and Darren Lockyer; and those are just the fancy-sounding records.
Anyone who watches the Broncos often knows Parker regularly tops the tackle and hit up counts, and is embarrassingly good at breaking tackles and offloading the football.
It may come as a surprise, then, that his call-up to the Maroons starting XIII is only the second of his career, and furthermore is only his 10th game for Queensland.
How can such a wonderful player for the Broncos, a club that has been a magnet for the attention of Maroons selectors for so long, have missed out on so many possible games at state level?
The answer, of course, is that there are other, equally wonderful players who have taken the lock, backrow and bench spots from him for many years.
Dallas Johnson, Michael Crocker, Ashley Harrison and Nate Myles are names that come to mind whom would have cost Parker some Maroons caps (not to mention some bit-part players of past Queensland sides like David Taylor and Jacob Lillyman).
They are all good players, and the four unbracketed ones in particular have a common theme to them: they are genuine workhorses.
Johnson and Harrison are two players cut from the same mould. They are both tireless defensive workers who play 80 minutes, helping make the hard metres towards the back ends of halves. But they really get paid the big bucks to top the tackle count in almost every game they play.
Myles and Crocker don’t generally play the full 80, but they do a bit more of the work up front and still get involved in plenty of tackles. These two guys also play the role of the fire-up merchant, something Harrison and Johnson weren’t particularly famed for.
But with Johnson leaving for England and coming back seemingly out of the Origin frame; Harrison having been dispensed with by Queensland selectors; Myles moving to the front row and Crocker seemingly always injured or on the bench for Souths, Parker gets his chance as Queensland’s number one lock forward.
At 31, you’d think it’s probably about time he got a gig.
Parker’s selection somewhat bucks the trend of past Maroons locks and backrowers mentioned above.
Sure, he does plenty of defensive work, and he will be a guy who puts his hand up to do the tough stuff when required, but he also tends to work a little more creatively around the ruck.
You could probably count the number of offloads Nate Myles and Dallas Johnson delivered unto their Queensland brethren in their entire, admittedly illustrious, careers on one hand. Ash Harrison tells a similar story with his play, though he doesn’t mind letting the arm breathe freely on the odd occasion.
Corey Parker’s arm, on the other hand (terrible pun alert), seems to loathe being cooped up in the region of his sweaty armpit. He appears to hate it when the coach tells him to cock his elbow and secure the ball, rather than let it be loose, free and ready to throw a ridiculous, behind-the-defender’s-back offload from even the most innocuous of hitups.
It’s a great thing for the Broncos, as most often that pass goes to a sniffing Andrew McCullough or Josh Hoffman (it used to go to Lockyer, of course) and the Brisbane side progress 10 metres further down the pitch.
Or, close to the line, he’ll be well and truly tackled by three earnest defenders, only for one of said defenders to find he’s laid a football shaped egg from a very strange part of his body. Sometimes it will fly out from between his legs, other times from under his arm, sometimes it seems like Parker can offload through a player’s torso to his teammate. Amazingly, this absurd pass almost always finds the chest of a teammate.
This is a skill Parker didn’t always have, but one that has developed in leaps and bounds in the latter parts of his career. If Queensland are looking for a point of difference in their attack in Origin II, the second-phase ball they are destined to get from Parker will go a long way to helping.
It could, of course, all go horribly wrong, and Corey could throw three speculators that hit the deck and get dived upon by blokes in blue shirts. Or worse, one could go to Josh Dugan or Robbie Farah and they could hare off to the other side to the field to dot the pill down between the uprights.
But if there is something we can all agree upon, it’s that Parker’s deserved his spot in Queensland’s starting line-up.
He has been immense for the Broncos in Lockyer’s later years and since the great five-eighth’s retirement. He took over Tonie Carroll’s defensive load when he left while still continuing to make an impact on attack. We all know what a directive to lead the defensive effort every week does to a player’s attacking game after all; just ask Nathan Hindmarsh.
At the grand old age of 31, Parker gets his shot at helping turn the Maroons’ Origin series around. It helps that the game’s in Brisbane. It certainly helps that he’s in rather good form.
It’s difficult to believe it’s only going to be his second ever start in Origin football, but I think most rugby league folks would hope, for Corey’s sake, it’s a good one!
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