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Nothing makes a rugby league fan shake their head and wonder why they bother quite like a player’s brain failing at the worst possible moment.
There are more than a few ways it’s explained away – brain explosion, brain fade, white line fever – call it what you like. Personally, I prefer ‘Wisdom’s Total Failure’ or WTF for short. This year has given us plenty of WTF moments but let’s take a look at three high quality examples.
For the first, we cast our minds back to ANZ stadium and the 80th minute of State of Origin game one. With about fifteen seconds left, Queensland’s Corey Parker loses the ball and it’s picked up by Greg Bird who in turn is tackled by Josh Papalii.
Behind on the scoreboard by two points and with almost 85 metres to cover for the (admittedly miraculous) New South Wales win, 80,000 Blues fans scream at Bird to get up so at the very least, the miracle is given a chance.*
Instead, Bird writhes all over Papalii like he’s riding a mechanical bull at the fairgrounds, fooling no one as he blatantly plays for a penalty and in the process burns every precious second he has. The referee blows full time before Bird has even stood up to play the ball. Queensland win 6-4.
Let’s move on to our second example. It’s the qualifying final between Cronulla and Canberra at GIO Stadium. It’s second versus third, playing for a vital week off and home preliminary final.
The Raiders have blown leads of 12-0 and 14-8 and the game is tied at 14-14. The crowd is at fever pitch – there are only three minutes left of what is a classic finals battle. Cronulla’s Ben Barba makes a break up the middle and is taken round the legs by Edrick Lee, about 25 metres from the tryline.
Canberra’s Elliott Whitehead quickly assesses the situation and decides that the best course of action is to launch himself into the prone Barba, including a swinging arm to Barba’s head for good measure. Whitehead is penalised, James Maloney burns two minutes kicking a simple goal and the Raiders can’t get the game back in the last minute. Cronulla wins 16-14.
Funnily enough, our third WTF moment occurred at the same venue last Saturday night in almost identical circumstances. The Raiders, from a seemingly unbeatable 18-0 lead against the Penrith Panthers, have let in two tries and the mountain men are coming hard at them with the score 18-12. There’s only ten minutes left and the loser is going to be eliminated. It’s time to lock things down and grind out a win.
Or is it? Canberra decide that the they’d prefer to play touch football, throwing the ball around early in the tackle count, putting each other under pressure and giving the Panthers chance after chance to level it up.
Ordinarily, that kind of whole team WTF moment would let the opposition steal a win, but young Penrith back rower James Fisher-Harris is having none of that. He’s determined to join the party, first taking Josh Hodgson high to get the Raiders out of extreme pressure inside their own half but just to make sure he finishes the job, in the 75th minute Fisher-Harris nails Aidan Sezer under the chin in almost the same spot of turf where Whitehead hit Barba.
Fisher-Harris is penalised and Jarrod Croker kicks the goal to give the Raiders an eight point lead and finally break the Panthers’ back. The home side eventually win 22-12, Penrith’s season is done and more than 21,000 people go home wondering WTF they just saw.
Rugby league is a hard game. Players are under extreme pressure from minute one to minute 80. There are only a few who consistently keep their heads and make the right decision under the weight of physical and mental fatigue.
This weekend as we head to the NRL’s second last weekend, fans of the four remaining teams will be praying that their team can keep their head on their shoulders when the game has to be won.
Who else has had classic WTF rugby league moments? Who can keep it together this weekend?
*If you’re reading this thinking ‘there’s no way they could have scored from there to win an Origin’, I direct you to Mark Coyne in 94’ and Michael Jennings in 2016…