Opinion
Reece Walsh acted foolishly when he reacted to a young fan’s taunt during Grand Final week but the Broncos star deserves nothing more than a stern word from club officials.
The smart thing for Walsh to do when the Penrith supporter said “Moses Leota is going to take your head off” would have been to ignore it.
Say it best when you say nothing at all.
Players are instructed to ignore the verbal barbs on and off the field but it’s only natural to occasionally react. And his “I’ll take your mum’s” response wasn’t even a good “yo momma” joke.
And of course when you do these days, a mobile phone switched to video mode will not be far away.
Reece Walsh. (Photo by Bradley Kanaris/Getty Images)
As far as “gotcha” moments for the modern sports star, this is at the very low end of the scale.
The NRL Integrity Unit is aware of the matter, which is usually code for “yeah, yeah, we know about this one but it’s barely worth us making a phone call”.
Broncos coach Kevin Walters has spoken to Walsh about the matter and that is as far as it needs to go.
After all, this incident happened while Walsh was attending a fans event to promote the Grand Final.
This wasn’t on the middle of the field when players expect to cop abuse and for the most part don’t even hear the white noise of fan sledges as they focus on the football.
The young Panthers fan in the video was reportedly “visibly upset and shaken” after the incident.
First of all, his initial reaction was one of “wow, did you hear that” as he turned to his comrade filming the interaction.
And secondly, if he was worried afterwards then that’s a good thing – perhaps he will know better next time than to provoke a professional athlete in a public setting, even if he didn’t intend for Walsh to take the comment seriously.
Walsh expressed contrition after he was banned for three matches, including Origin III, in June after he blurted out “what the f— do you mean, c—” to referee Chris Butler during Brisbane’s loss to Gold Coast.
He was lucky he didn’t cop a longer ban.
Even though he tried to defend his actions by claiming teammate Patrick Carrigan was the target of his verbal spray, Walsh said afterwards that he knew he was a “role model to young kids and the community” and would work hard to be better with his behaviour.
He’d had a minor late-night incident in the pre-season with future Maroons teammate David Fifita and a couple of on-field skirmishes with Jarome Luai which weren’t a great look so he needed to pull his head in.
The fan clash on Thursday was not the greatest example of being a role model but the biggest test of the 21-year-old’s maturity will come on Sunday night when Penrith target him.
It wouldn’t be a surprise if the experienced Panthers try to unsettle Walsh, either physically or verbally, at Accor Stadium.
Luai, Liam Martin, Stephen Crichton, step this way.
(Photo by Chris Hyde/Getty Images)
Brisbane are the underdogs and haven’t won a title for 17 years but just making a GF is not enough for the Broncos. It shouldn’t be for any club but you could see last year that Parramatta seemed satisfied to have broken their hoodoo and were ill-prepared for the Panthers machine.
The Broncos expect and demand success.
Even though Walsh has a couple of Origin games under his belt now, nothing prepares a young star who is crucial to a team’s chances for the pressure of an NRL Grand Final.
Due to quirks in the draw and his mid-season ban, Walsh has never played a match at Accor Stadium in his 60-game NRL career so that is another hurdle for the talented fullback to overcome.
“Reece is ready to go, he’s just excited about tomorrow night,” Walters said on Saturday at his final pre-game media conference. “He’s never played a game here, so it was good for Reece to come out and have a look at the surroundings.
“He’s a very popular rugby league player. We’re trying to keep him grounded and that’s very hard, but we’ll just let his football do the talking now. We’ve got through the hard part of the week for him; his best part is playing.”
If Walsh can play his part in a Broncos upset, that will be the sweetest retort of all to the boos that will be coming his way from the Penrith fans.
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