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NRL and Rugby League Week need to sort out the Immortals

18th September, 2014
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Paul Gallen is going from strength to strength in the ring. (AAP Image/Paul Miller)
Expert
18th September, 2014
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When the NRL made NSW Origin skipper Paul Gallen ineligible for the Brad Fittler Medal, but added he was eligible for Immortal status, battle lines were drawn.

The NRL was quite within its rights to stop Gallen being voted the NSW Origin player of the series after his suspect suspension over the Sharks peptide farce.

As a result Jarryd Hayne and Ryan Hoffman shared the Fittler Medal honour.

But any decision on Immortal status has nothing to do with the NRL, nor the ARL Commission – it is the sole intellectual property of Rugby League Week.

That too is a farce.

If you ask any rugby league player if he would prefer to be judged an Immortal, or win the Dally M, the vast majority would vote for Immortal status.

Yet the highest honour in the game is judged by a weekly magazine, and not the code’s governing body.

Let’s turn the clock back to 1981, and the first Immortals – Clive Churchill, Reg Gasnier, Johnny Raper, and Bobby Fulton.

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It took another 18 years before RLW got off its backside to induct Graeme Langlands and Wally Lewis, four more years for Artie Beetson, and another nine years for Andrew Johns.

The haphazard induction process needs a drastic overhaul. Sadly, the three founding fathers are no longer with us.

Frank Hyde died in 2007 aged 91. An inside back, Hyde represented NSW in 1938 and 1939, scored a try in the 1938 grand final when Balmain won the premiership, and captain-coached the North Sydney Bears to their losing grand final to Newtown in 1943. But Hyde’a real claim to fame was broadcasting rugby league on radio from the sideline rain, hail, or shine, calling 33 consecutive grand finals in a stellar career.

The caviar was hearing his rich baritone voice singing ‘Danny Boy’, and I never got sick of hearing it – magnificent.

Harry Bath died in 2008 aged 83, Bath played first grade for Brisbane Souths at 16, but spent most of his illustrious career overseas, playing 346 games for Warrington, so he was never a Kangaroo, but did play four games for NSW – a skilful ball distributor, and a great goal-kicker.

Tom Goodman, who died in 1989 aged 87, was the printed voice of rugby league through the Sydney Morning Herald and Sun Herald, and was just as respected as the paper’s senior cricket scribe as well.

Three great blokes, who became rugby league icons. But with their passing, it’s time for RLW to modernise the Immortal status.

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The 1981 basics were quite simple: the three judges had to see every nomination play, so that precluded those who played before the second World War. The second criteria was any nominated player had to be retired for five years. The third was every nomination was judged solely on playing ability, and anything that happened off the field wasn’t taken into consideration.

Strangely, for three very switched on rugby league legends, no time span was given by the founding fathers as to when future Immortals would be inducted.

RLW has reported they will look to further inductions in 2017. Not good enough.

There must be a regular sequence of inductions. If it’s not every year like the Dally Ms, then at least every two or three years, with at least two inducted.

And stop ignoring off-field indiscretions, which brings us back to Paul Gallen, and Andrew Johns, who would never have been inducted as an Immortal if his off-field indiscretions were taken into account – especially publicly admitting to taking banned substances during his career, but was never caught.

So who is closing in on Immortality?

Time is running out for Kenny Irvine to be recognised, as most of the current RLW selection panel wouldn’t have seen him play. His last game was for Manly in 1973, and he died in 1990, aged 50, after a long battle with leukaemia.

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Irvine stills holds the NRL try-scoring record with 212 from 236 games, 170 of them for the North Sydney Bears who found a new way to be beaten almost every week. He also scored 30 tries for NSW in 24 games, and 33 tries for the Kangaroos in 31 Tests.

Irvine is the greatest rugby league winger I’ve ever seen, and should have been inducted in 1981 with the first four.

The rest in the running – Mal Meninga, who should have been inducted instead of Johns, Norm Provan, Peter Sterling, Ron Coote, Allen Langer, Brad Fittler, and Darren Lockyer.

No doubt Greg Inglis, Johnathan Thurston, Cameron Smith, and Billy Slater will figure prominently once their five years in retirement is cleared.

But first things first – let’s have RLW update their thinking and make the induction of Immortals something special and meaningful, rather than just an afterthought, or an aberration.

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