The 100 best players in NRL history: 100-71

In 2008, to commemorate one hundred years of history of the greatest game of all in Australia, the National Rugby League commissioned historians, journalists and sundry experts from the game’s Hall of Fame to formalise a list of Australian rugby league’s one hundred best players.

Reg Gasnier, Bob ‘Bozo’ Fulton, Clive Churchill, Dally Messenger, well … even if you never saw these people play – and chances are you didn’t, given Bozo is the youngest of that quartet and last laced up a boot for the Roosters in 1979 – then you’ve heard of these people. Their names will live forever.

Others on the list, not so much. Which is a shame because the likes of Viv Thicknesse of the Roosters, George Treweek of Souths, Dan Dempsey from Warwick Brothers, and Chris ‘The Hairy Bloke’ McKivat of the Glebe Dirty Reds, they were the best of their time. And well worth a Google.

Yet because we can’t “see” them play, it’s hard for we of the television and YouTube generations to really contextualise how good they were.

It’s also ten years since that esteemed panel of past pigskin people began formulating their list. And since then there’s been Johnathan Thurston, Cam Smith and Greg Inglis, to name a glistening gilded few. So the best ever hundred may be due for an update.

It will not happen here, however. No – that list is for the qualified boffins.

This list, rather, is the best 100 players who laced up a boot in Australia from 1980. 100 years of history, but we’ll confine our quest to the empirical of 37. The end of the Fulton era, Dawn of State Of Origin, when the author was ten years old and can “see” all the following heroes in famous, technicolour dreams. And on YouTube.

And they are:

100 – Mark Geyer
The great ‘MG’ thundered and frothed around the footy field, all hard charges, long arms and crazy eyes. To coin AC/DC’s love sonnet ‘Live Wire’, Geyer was hotter than a rollin’ dice, wilder than a drunken fight.

Had referee David Manson not stood between he and Wally Lewis in Origin II of 1991, Geyer would have planted more than one upon the chin of His Majesty The King. Not to pigeon-hole him (!) though because he was a ripper of a footy player who famously charged hard onto the Raiders’ short drop-out in the ’91 grand final and dished for Royce Simmons, who scored. And there were wild and woolly-good times in the west.

99 – Nathan Hindmarsh
The hardest worker since Donald Trump’s alternative fact checker, the ‘Spuddie from Robbo’ had a large back-rig, shorts that couldn’t stay up, and hair that looked like he cut himself once every year or so with a pair of his grandad’s secateurs. Also played 330 games for the Parramatta Eels.

98 – Phil Blake
Turned up at Manly in 1982 aged about 11 and ripped off more tricks than Mandrake. Could chip-and-chase for Australia, though never did, his rep career peaking off the bench for the Blues in Origin III of ’89. Also played for Souths, Saints, Norths, Canberra, Auckland, Warrington and Wigan.

97 – Les Boyd
Mark Geyer before Mark Geyer came along. Mark Geyer when it was more than allowed, it was mandatory, to be Mark Geyer. Boyd could really play, though. It’s just that if he was fouled early – as he often was – he’d spend the whole game trying to square up. Broke Darryl Brohman’s jaw in Origin I of ’83. Later rubbed out by judiciary chairman Jim Comans’ great new broom of justice.

96 – Kevin Hastings
Would’ve played for New South Wales and Australia (and should’ve if you ask many Rooster people) had it not been for Steve Mortimer, Peter Sterling and ‘Slippery’ Steve Morris who had dibs on the rep seven. Yet ‘Horrie’ stayed home and had the Chooks humming.

95 – Craig Fitzgibbon
Beating heart and James-Brown-belting-out-Sex-Machine soul of the Roosters in their dynasty of 2001 to ’03. A second-rower who could run 80 metres and kick goals. Fair player, Fitzy.

94 – Cliff Lyons
Soft hands and silky skills, the brilliant five-eighth was a dream to run off for rampaging forwards, angle-running centres and Steve Menzies who profited to the tune of 180 tries, many from sniffing about our Cliff.

93 – Steve Morris
‘Slippery’ was so fast his patented chip and chase was effectively bunt the ball over the line of defence and burn everyone with incredible pace. Can’t have weighed more than Hugh Bowman; could run like Winx.

92 – Tim Brasher
Kept Brett Mullins out of State of Origin. And also this list.

91 – Rod Reddy
The author’s favourite footy player as a boy, ‘The Rocket’ would thunder around the field like a moustachioed bottle of OP rum. Never saw a jaw that couldn’t be improved with his forearm. Rumoured to be ‘The Phantom Biter’.

90 – Gary Freeman
‘The Wiz’ played 45 times for New Zealand and played like Les Boyd in Hugh Bowman’s body.

89 – Geoff Toovey
Snowy-haired and often-stitched Manly halfback considered the toughest pound-for-pound bit of gristle to bleed on Brookie since Terry Randall. Only just bigger than the Winfield Cup he lifted over his head in ’96.

88 – Sam Thaiday
‘Third-man-in Thaiday’ has a tattoo which reads “One brother bleeds, all brothers bleed”. Super footy player who runs hard wide of the ruck and full tilt into State of Origin melees. Funny man.

87 – Chris Anderson
Quick little wing man who scurried about like a frightened meerkat. Played 230 games for Berries-Bulldogs.

86 – Chris Close
Queensland didn’t make shorts big enough to hold ‘Choppy’ Close’s thighs. Bigger thighs than Mal Meninga. Very good thighs. And when Origin was born in 1980 it was Choppy Close’s thunder thighs that rent the Blues asunder and won our Choppy the man-of-the-match award.

85 – David Gillespie
A thick-necked, wide boulder of a human being who could shoot his shoulders into the sternums of the game’s hardest chargers and stop them like a shotgun full of pellets of hot dung. An absolute brute. Nice fellah, though.

84 – Darius Boyd
If there’s been one constant in Queensland’s dominance over NSW in the last decade or so, it’s Cameron Smith. But Darius has been there too. And he’s really, really good. People think he isn’t because they don’t sort of like him. But he is, he’s really good, Darius. Top player.

83 – Brett Kimmorley
‘Noddy’ kept ‘Joey’ Johns out of the No.7 jumper in the 2000 State of Origin series, which tells you plenty about the dangerous drugs consumed by NSW selectors at that time. Kimmorley was a super halfback, however. Stocky and strong, high-skilled – the rich man’s Mat Orford.

82 – Brett Stewart
Old ‘Snake Hips’ was a crowd favourite at Brookvale Oval because he scored more tries than Cristiano Ronaldo scored invites to short-term liaisons in the finest nightclub in all Madrid.

81 – Benji Marshall
Hot stepping hep-cat from Whakatane who bedazzled the game of rugby league like Haley’s Comet if Haley’s Comet actually did something rather than sit there fuzzy in the sky. No-one had ever seen anything like Benji Marshall. An excited Wests Tigers’ recruitment man exclaimed to Tim Sheens: “I’ve found a kid who can step in mid-air!” Paul Vautin watched him rip off some manoeuvres and remarked: “And that. What do you call that?”

80 – Dale Shearer
Slim-hipped and eely, ‘Rowdy’ Shearer had shades of Doc Emmett Brown from Back To The Future crossed with Manly cult wing man Stuie Davis. Shearer was heaps better than Stuie, though. They shouldn’t even be really mentioned in the same sentence. It would be an insult to Dale Shearer. Remember that.

79 – Greg Dowling
Giant shaggy man-beast who’d thunder into opponents like a wild slab of mobile horse-meat. Famous for fighting Kevin Tamati on the sidelines at Lang Park in a Test match in ’85, and surviving.

78 – Matthew Bowen
‘Mango’ Bowen from Hope Vale in the north of the northernmost reaches of our mighty island home ran around Townsville like a wallaby trailing a string of firecrackers. Cracking player. The best fun running man of his time.

77 – Brent Tate
Diamond-hard and laser-straight centre who broke his neck and wore a brace and slayed ‘em from day dot. Great player, B Tate.

76 – Brett Morris
The Son of Slippery would give Winx a run. But Winx would win. Because Winx is a horse. Horses are faster than people. Brett Morris is pretty fast, though. Just not as fast as a horse. Particularly not Winx, which is very fast. And a horse.

75 – Craig Young
‘Albert’ Young was a policeman who rampaged up the park and popped tidy short balls for Slippery, Rocket, and others.

74 – Wendell Sailor
There was a time when our Del was a spunk-filled punk that he trotted onto the field in the full belief that he could tuck the ball under his arms and run over the top of the biggest man on the field. Just pick him out, whoever he is, the biggest one, and run over that guy. Didn’t matter who he was. Andre the Giant? Bring it on. And that’s what separates the great ones from the rest of us: delusional belief.

73 – Steve Folkes
Pocket rocket second-rower who could tackle for Australia, and did.

72 – Mark Gasnier
Had a move called the “shimmy-shimmy-woosh” which regularly confounded good D-men.

71 – Ben Kennedy
A fine, thundering back-rower who Newcastle Knights coach Michael Hagan instructed to run over the top of Parramatta Eels halfback Jason Taylor many times in the 2001 grand final. Did many other good things, too. Really good player. Played for Australia.

To celebrate the launch of the limited edition Isuzu D-MAX X-RUNNER, we’re recounting the NRL’s 100 best players in the history of the game.