25 in 25: The best fights of the NRL era, featuring Gallen, Benji, Farah and one night in Brookvale

Look, we all know fighting is neither big nor clever. It’s certainly in the best interests of the game as a whole that it isn’t commonplace anymore. But let’s be honest with ourselves: it’s also a lot of fun, at least for the primal elements inside us.

As a great philosopher (aka my Dad) once said: “Nobody ever went to a rugby league game and said ‘that was great, except for the fight’”.

It provides our sport with some of its biggest *ahem* characters, and that’s who we’ll be honing in on: we’ve gone through 16 categories on this feature so far, and very few of them have included John Skandalis as many times as we will here.

There are good players who can fight – Paul Gallen would be top of the list – but we also celebrate the goons, the enforcers and the grubs, those for whom physicality often was the beginning and end of their abilities. There’s the heavyweights, but a few special mentions for the little guys with angry attitudes who liked to throw a few.

So strap em on, pin em back and stick em up: it’s the best of the blues, the finest of the fisticuffs, the doyens of donnybrooks and the sine qua non of stinks across 25 glorious years of getting it on for young and old.

If you’ve missed it, this is the latest in our series celebrating 25 years of the NRL – and we have already ranked the best fullbacks, wingers, five-eighths, locks, second-rowers, players to never make Origin, coaches, captains, halfbacks, front-rowers, goal-kickers, recruits, heaviest hitters, rookies, Kiwis and Grand Final moments of the era.

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The Rabbitohs and Knights in the middle of a good old fashioned melee. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

The champs

1 The Battle of Brookvale, 2011
2 Farah v Watts, 2009
3 Warriors v Broncos, 2003
4 O’Meley v Gibbs, 2006
5 Lowe v Hoffman, 2006
6 Relf v Shiels, 1998
7 Gallen v Skandalis, 2004
8 Perry v Peacock
9 Warriors v Roosters, 1999
10 Tallis v Ross, 2003

It’s basically impossible to talk about rugby league dust-ups without beginning at Brookvale, site of several of the most infamous over the years. None for so than the Battle of Brookie, when Manly and Melbourne cemented one of the game’s newest rivalries after a brutal clash in late August 2011.

Things had already started badly, with a bad injury for David Williams, and then descended into chaos as Adam Blair and Glenn Stewart were binned for fighting. The pair then reconvened beneath the Brookvale grandstand for another go, where they were swiftly joined by their teammates, half the benches and coaching staff. Ten players ended up being charged, with Blair getting five matches and Stewart three.

At the other end of the scale for size, though not aggression, was one of the all-time comebacks from Wests Tigers legend Robbie Farah. He’d taken a sly one from Cowboys hooker Anthony Watts and decided to take the law into his own hands in time-honoured fashion, by unhooking himself in a scrum and swinging until he could swing no more.

Next are the Warriors, who could have made it for several efforts. After trawling through hundreds of fight videos in research, they’re clearly the front-runners in terms of the most all-in stinks, with one particular 26-man brawl, shared with the Broncos in 2003, a standout.

It had some of the toughest from all weight categories, with Awen Guttenbeil, Petero Civoniceva, Monty Betham and, one of the best of the lot, Carl Webb.

They get another mention further down, too, with a scrap that saw two sent off way back in 1999. It was one of those where several started everywhere, prompted by a swinging arm from Ali Lauti’iti that saw him sent off alongside Chooks captain Brad Fittler.

Neither would be classed as usual suspects in the fight game, but the next on the list are all regulars. Mark O’Meley’s punch on with Bryce Gibbs, followed by the hardest of hard carries aimed straight at his prior partner later in the game, had to be in there, as did John Skandalis’ meeting with Paul Gallen and a pure battle of the goons, Ryan Hoffman v Jaiman Lowe.

A top ten wouldn’t be complete without Gorden Tallis, and while his meeting for the ages with Wigan’s Terry O’Connor was pre-NRL, his beatdown of Ben Ross certainly makes the cut, and probably needs a mention of Sam Thaiday and Luke O’Donnell too, who met in spectacular fashion in a Queensland derby in 2010.

Robert Relf and Peter Shiels played one for the ages out in the very first year of the NRL, in a manner that you simply wouldn’t see today: Shiels throws the footy at Relf, in the manner that makes old school commentators lament how blokes get away with it in the modern game. Suffice to say, he did not get away with it, as the Bulldogs big man started windmilling in the classic fashion.

Though not in the NRL, the World Club Challenge is one of the most consistently angry fixtures about and did take place in the NRL era with NRL teams, so it gets a run.

The best of the bunch – and the only one of our 25 that I attended in person – was Josh Perry’s swinging match with Leeds Rhinos legend Jamie Peacock back in 2009.

It’s worth including both for the scrap and for Mike ‘Stevo’ Stephenson’s commentary. “He’s no lover of Australians,” says main commentator Eddie Hemmings on UK broadcaster Sky.

“Join the queue,” quips Stevo, who played four seasons for Penrith and has lived on and off in Australia for decades.

The contenders

11 Tahu v Vaeliki, 2001
12 Skandalis v Smith, 2003
13 SBW v Bailey, 2006
14 Webb v Smith, 2006
15 Gallen v Shillington, 2008
16 Wighton v Feki, 2015
17 Panthers v Sharks, 2010
18 Kasiano v Chambers, 2017
19 Mason v Lang, 2004
20 Vidot v Rogers, 2009

The also-rans are included for one-off showings or consistent work over a career of being a hard nut. The latter gets Skandalis another run, along with serial offenders Will Chambers, Willie Mason and Justin Smith, with whom Skandalis shared a bell-ringer in 2003.

Chambers, regularly voted the biggest grub in the NRL, has been in several but the most memorable was his crack at Sam Kasiano in 2017: perhaps exacerbated by the muddy pitch, the surroundings of Belmore and the huge pile-on that resulted. Delightfully old school.

The best of the unlikely candidates was a 2015 blue between Jack Wighton and Sosaia Feki, neither known for their fighting. Wighton landed one straight on the beak of the Sharks winger, who to his credit, walked right through it.

Daniel Vidot knows how he feels, having shipped several to Ben Rogers in a fiery clash in 2009, cementing Canberra as the second most-frequently seen side on this list.

They had Jason Smith in a scrap with South Sydney’s Stuart Webb behind the sticks at Homebush in 2006, with the Raiders man leaving with a face full of claret for his troubles.

Timanu Tahu and David Vaeliki had a best-of-the-backs swinging match in 2001 that still lingers in the memory, while Sonny Bill Williams’ career as a boxer was foreshadowed way back in 2006, tangling with Phil Bailey after the Cronulla man had laid out Brad Morrin.

Gallen’s tussle with Dave Shillington in 2008 would have been higher had more landed, and the same goes for Willie Mason’s meeting with Martin Lang in 2004.

Rounding out the list is an all-in effort from the Panthers and Sharks in 2010 – Gallen off the field at the time – in which Grant Millington, a legend of Super League biff, laid several on an unsuspecting Gavin Cooper.

The lightweights

21 Sandow v Rogers, 2009
22 Marshall v Pearce, 2010
23 Panthers v Knights, 2015
24 Scott v Walker, 2019
25 Morris v Morris, 2003

It’s not always a big man’s game. Indeed, some of the best have been down the classes. Chris Sandow lived the dream of many who have listened to his commentary by laying a few on Mick Ennis in 2009, while even the sainted Benji Marshall was no stranger to a stink, getting stuck right into Mitchell Pearce in 2010.

Speaking of small people, spare a thought for the young cheerleaders at Penrith when Dean Whare, Nathan Ross and Tupou Sapoaga got stuck into it, spilled off the pitch and into an assembled group of ten-year-old girls. Not a good look.

The most recent entry in our list is from Curtis Scott and Dylan Walker, with the Storm back fining himself sent off in 2019 after a running battle with Walker resulted in him landing three square to the Manly star’s jaw.

And a final, inevitable mention has to go to the fight that wasn’t: as it all kicked off in the corner between Dragons and Dogs, the twins faked a scrap between themselves to much amusement.