- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
While Wednesday’s Origin has been played and won – by the Blues 26-18 – the most controversial aspect of the match was Greg Inglis’ no try. Here we take a look at a parallel universe where things went a little differently.
Origin Two: Greg Inglis in runaway that leads to match winning try
The Queensland Maroons have snatched victory through a try to Billy Slater after a bit of Greg Inglis brilliance in the closing stages of Wednesday’s game.
With 13 minutes remaining and leading 20-18 NSW five-eighth Mitchell Pearce spilled the ball 20 metres from the Queensland line. The man the Blues least wanted to see pick up the ball immediately did and away he went. Inglis showed great pace to streak away from the Blues defenders, who fell away from the pursuit until only Josh Morris was standing.
Inglis was about to dive over the line when he seemed to have second thoughts and started to jog toward the posts. Morris headed straight at Inglis who attempted to side step Morris and get back into the field of play.
It was now apparent that, remembering the endless string of bogus video referee decisions, Inglis was trying to get into the field of play to be tackled close to the line. Morris in turn was attempting to tackle Inglis in the in goal area and force him to “score” his try so that the video referee could possibly reverse it.
Although Morris had a handful of Inglis’s jumper he couldn’t prevent him getting back over the stripe and falling to the ground near the line.
“I haven’t touched him ref,” called Morris and Inglis was warned that he would be penalised for a voluntary tackle so he sprang to his feet.
By this time both teams had assembled a brains trust of hardened campaigners to work out the possible permutations. If the Blues could somehow drag Inglis into the in goal area and force the ball with him on top of it, bingo, video ref.
If the Maroons could get Inglis held up in goal or tackled in the field of play, bingo, play on. At one stage they tried forming a scrum to push Inglis into the in goal but the Blues made it obvious that they wouldn’t resist and would drag Inglis through and the ball would be dead.
For several minutes the teams milled around insulting one another or pleading with the officials to “do something!” One of the larger NSW forwards suggested that he rush Inglis and try to grab the ball in a one-on-one strip. Wiser heads pointed out that eight minutes before Morris had touched GI’s jumper and thus it would be deemed a two-man strip and result in a penalty.
Eventually it became evident that NSW didn’t have to do anything more than maintain the status quo. As soon as time expired they could tackle Inglis and the game would be over. Now Daly Cherry-Evans showed why he gets the big bucks. Spotting that Inglis was sitting on the ground and that the extremely tall, and therefore prone to falling over, David Klemmer was standing near by DCE after a hasty check of the playbook agreed on a call with Josh McGuire.
The big forward stood nose to nose with Klemmer as DCE crawled behind the Blues interchange forward’s legs. When in position the half back called out, “Thar she blows!” (An odd choice but he’s from a beach-side suburb). A quick push and Klemmer toppled onto the unsuspecting Inglis.
“Ref, ref. A tackle,” the few Queenslanders awake to the plot cried. The referee glanced across and immediately waved his arm to indicate the zero tackle. Unfortunately most of the NSW team were 30 metres away receiving a lengthy rundown on Josh Dugan’s tattoos again.
Billy Slater dashed in to dummy half and slipped over untouched to score a soon-to-be-converted try. The Blues players pleaded for a replay of the incident involving Cherry-Evans, McGuire and Klemmer only to be told that the replay equipment was filled up already with the events from 10 minutes earlier in this the longest tackle in history.
I woke in a lather of sweat to discover this was just a dream, had never happened, could never happen. A player deliberately not scoring, no!
Although someone watching the game with me suggested it as Inglis ran away, “get tackled GI, get tackled.”
Reckon you can pick the winning team? Build your own dream team with Draftstars daily fantasy and compete on any match. For great odds on the NRL head on over to PlayUp. Imagine what you could be buying instead. Set a deposit limit.