This week has been a celebration of Cameron Smith’s tremendous representative career.
He’s without peer on so many counts, and as has been told and retold constantly, Andrew Johns – who in The Book of Rugby League, as written by a fat kid who played poorly for South Newcastle under 10s, is better than the best Queensland spine of all-time combined – says Cameron Smith is the greatest rugby league player of all time.
He never throws a bad pass. He always comes up with the right play. He tackles, then tackles, then tackles some more.
I dunno, he’s just, like, heaps good at footy.
In his early days the lads down in Melbourne called him ‘the accountant’ because when you’re 190 centimetres and weigh 110 kilos, a bloke like Cam – who stands at a piddling 185 centimetres and only weighs 90 kilos – is shamefully small.
(It occurs to me that those Storm blokes might have different accountants to the rest of us – no salary cap jokes, please.)
In more than a few ways he strikes me as the Aussie Tom Brady.
The New England Patriots quarterback is the consummate pro, having won five Super Bowls, been named the MVP in the big dance on four occasions, and also… Y’know what, here’s his Wikipedia page – in case you didn’t know, he’s won everything.
Just like Cam.
(AAP Image/Craig Golding)
Both have also built empires alongside legendary coaches – Bill Belichick in Boston, Craig Bellamy in Melbourne.
And for both, embittered losers – hands up, mine’s in the air – have written a little note in the margins of their stellar careers.
They’re kind of cheats?
After claiming victory in the AFC championship game of the 2014–15 NFL playoffs, it was revealed the Pats had deliberately underinflated balls. I don’t know enough (anything?) about American football to explain how, but it gave Brady’s boys an advantage, some crazy how.
The result was Brady being suspended for four games the following season, with only the Super Bowl ring he’d won to keep him company.
As for Cam, well, we all know what went down in Melbourne in 2010.
Apples and oranges, I know. And also, the salary cap scandal wasn’t Cam’s fault (although Brady maintains he didn’t know jack about deflated balls either).
Look, the cheat thing is a half-cooked comparison, I’ll admit.
But it’s my clumsy way of seguing into where Cameron Smith really shines: the grey areas of rugby league’s rules.
(AAP Image/Dave Hunt)
One percenters are all the rage in footy – the little things that no one notices but make all the difference.
Say, for example, getting up after making a tackle and finding your place in the defensive line. You probably won’t make the next tackle, but by being where you’re supposed to be – instead of taking a moment to find your breath after pulling down a rampaging Raymond Faitala-Mariner – the attacking side aren’t presented with a gap to expose.
It’s virtually impossible to quantify, because you haven’t done anything – not really. But by shutting down the possibility of a break, you’ve actually made all the difference.
And while Cameron Smith absolutely picks himself up off the ground to get back in the defensive line – every. Freaking. Time – he makes a different kind of one percenter.
Again, they’re virtually impossible to quantify, but he makes one percenters that should be penalised.
I don’t recall who the Storm were playing, but there was a break downfield and Smith made chase.
Billy Slater was always going to make the tackle on the bloke screaming down the wing, but with a support player looming, it was two on one. To make things even worse, there was a third attacking player charging up as well, just a little further back.
Now, Cam was never going to catch the bloke who made the break. Likewise, he had Buckley’s of getting that first support player.
But the third? He was right there, in front of Cam.
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So what does the Storm captain do? He doesn’t nudge him with his shoulder or trip him or anything so noticeably crass as any of that.
Cam just grabbed the back of the third man’s jersey and slowed down.
“You’re staying back here with me, mate.”
He doesn’t take out the support player – he doesn’t actually take anyone out. He just pulls the third man, the one who presents the further possibility of an opportunity, out of the equation.
Semantics? Maybe, but if you take someone out, the ref blows the whistle. Pull him back? Well, that’s a lot harder to penalise.
And it’s a great one percenter. Maybe you didn’t do anything, but two-on-one is a 50-50 for a defending fullback. Three-on-one – and maths can piss right off – is a try.
That moment was everything Cam Smith is about.
Forget playing on the line of the law – in the words of Joey Tribiani, “You’re so far past the line that you can’t even see the line! The line is a dot to you!”
But he doesn’t do the obvious thing. He minimises the possibility of his team being put at a disadvantage.
And again, yes, he throws great passes, blah, blah, blah.
But watch Cameron Smith next time you go to a game. His real work is done far away from the play, in the margins – next to the words ‘kind of a cheat’.
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