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Chances are when you think of country rugby league players you imagine a tall, rangy, bearded bloke crashing through the defensive line and wrestling his fancied city slicker rival to the ground like a prized ram got loose in the top paddock.
That is, Shaun Fensom.
However, in a rural travesty of justice right up there with any dodgy Easter Show livestock silly buggers, Fensom finds himself with nothing to do this weekend but shop for new flannos and fix a few miles of fence as he’s missed out completely on rep footy.
The mind boggles, it really does. If Fensom isn’t Noel Cleal 2.0 then I’m Ben Gonzales, and everyone knows how good Crusher went when given a shot in the big time.
Usually you could rack an oversight like Fensom’s up to the fact that the selectors had forgotten that there is actually a team in Canberra, but look through the Country side and there are three of the buggers in there!
The selectors managed to find a place for Sam Williams, a bloke who the Raiders were on the verge of shipping off to the Dragons a month ago; Jack Wighton, who has only had a handful of first grade games thanks to a cursed trampoline; and Josh McCrone, a player who’ll only play halfback in Origin if NSW have another Brett Finch as Steven Bradbury debacle.
To really rub it in though the country selectors have chosen six back rowers in their team (although James is probably more of a prop these days), and the opening second rowers have only combined played only a handful over half the NRL games Fensom has.
For the life of me I can’t see what Fensom has done wrong.
Perhaps the selectors are worried Fensom might want to steal everybody else’s tackles, and get greedy in trying to break his own world record of 75 in a single match.
Maybe they’re worried he’ll insist on something stupid like playing for the entire eighty minutes of the game.
Or even more fiendishly, maybe there’s now a representative red-haired quota that teams are required to meet, clearly explaining how Newcastle benchie Alex Mckinnon jumped the queue ahead of Fensom.
If any of this is true then it’s truly a sad state of affairs, but even more sadly early reports are that for the first time in his life, this raw boned country lad Fensom is wishing he was born somewhere in down town big smoke.
I mean after all, Tony Williams managed to get a run for them!
Country side
1. Brett Stewart
2. Akuila Uate
3. Jamal Idris
4. Josh Morris
5. Michael Gordon
6. Jarrod Mullen
7. James Maloney
8. Ryan James
9. Mick Ennis (c)
10. Trent Merrin
11. Josh Jackson
12. Boyd Cordner
13. Ryan Hinchcliffe
Interchange
14. Willie Mason
15. Aiden Tolman
16. Alex McKinnon
17. Josh McCrone
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