- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
“Any boss who sacks anyone for not turning up today is a bum!” And with those famous words from the Prime Minister, Cameron Smith’s illustrious sin-binning was forever inscribed to the nation’s history.
Who will ever forget the night the Immortal-in-waiting was instructed from the field by something other than the siren?
When we bore witness to an event so rare, so profound and so far-reaching, the nation was granted the entire Easter weekend off as a mark of divine respect?
Like Watergate, the bubonic plague, or when Spud smashed Chief, Smith’s binning changed the course of history forever – or at least the remainder of a match with 33 penalties, which was almost as long.
Where were you when the world was indelibly altered? When our species began to question what is real anymore?
When Matt Cecchin – repeatedly pestered by Smith over everything from ruck control to internet speeds – eventually decided 2865 times was one too many and produced his Rosa Parks moment?
Make no mistake, the images associated with this remarkable juncture will live long in the national psyche, even possibly replacing those of Allan Langer on a tabletop in his reggies.
Grown men uniting to weep in the streets, relieved the 362-game wait was finally over, their disbelief palpable that Smith could be pinged for dissent, and, even more amazingly, before Paul Gallen.
Those kids awoken from their slumber by browbeaten parents, thrust bleary-eyed in front of the television to witness a moment that hatched a fresh hope their forebearers never enjoyed.
The conspiracy theorists branding the moment as the latest hoax since the moon landing, unerring in their scepticism as to how the ref could send himself off.
Smith being marched as a rank-and-file player was a moment where time stood still.
Some say this was due to the intense gravity of seeing the impregnable captain slain, or because he stopped inside the touchline to piss us off one last time.
[latest_videos_strip category=”rugby-league” name=”League”]
Either way, by overruling a dictatorial superior, the heroic Cecchin has blazed a trail Gandhi could’ve only dreamed of when he tried to advance mankind with the one-marker policy.
Some have likened his bravery to dragging the nation out of the dark ages just like the Renaissance, a harmonious comparison considering this coincided with Smith’s debut.
Cecchin’s decision will forever be stamped as a potent symbol of triumph, or the moment he probably cost himself his job.
So with Smith now treated as an equal, there is only one thing remaining for humankind.
Prepare for the apocalypse.