Covering rugby league for the best part of 50 years you get to see a lot of dumb things on the footy field. Marty Taupau’s knee to the chest of South Sydney’s Campbell Graham on the weekend rates right up there with the dumbest. Like so many of the brain-snaps that appear in the game as regularly as winter frost, it was completely unnecessary and puts the Broncos under pressure that coach Kevin Walters could well do without as the team pushes for a top two spot.
Taupau, just days after signing a contract extension, was brought to Brisbane to provide much-needed experience, football knowledge and coolness under the pump. What he served up in the 29th minute of Friday night’s game was none of those things. In fact, it was just the opposite. The biggest question of the night was: what was he thinking? That wasn’t a hit up. It looked like he was competing in the hop, step and jump at the Paris Olympics.
I hadn’t seen anything as blatantly illegal as that since … well, since Reagan Campbell-Gillard dropped his knees into the back of the Titans’ Chris Randall a week earlier. Given Campbell-Gillard copped four weeks on the sideline for his act of abject stupidity, Marty can probably consider himself lucky to only be serving three. He still earns a place in my all-time rugby league ‘Did I Just See What I Think I Saw?’ list though, which is no small thing given some of the other contenders.
You’ve got the shockingly brutal, like Les Boyd’s elbow to the jaw of Darryl Brohman in 1983 and Steve Linnane eye-gouging Greg Alexander four years later. Then there’s the head-shakingly incomprehensible like John Hopoate being John Hopoate and Manly’s Don McKinnon spending a penny in the middle of the old Lang Park in 1988.
More recently we’ve seen try celebrations that defy description – Stephen Crichton starting a fight by pulling Canberra’s innocent bystander Joe Tapine in from over the sideline after his Panthers team-mate Charlie Staines had scored, and the Dragons’ Zac Lomax also igniting an all-in brawl when he jumped on the back of Knights’ backrower Tyson Frizell after a Jack Bird try.
The one that really stands out for me though is Steve ‘Blocker’ Roach patting referee Eddie Ward on the head after he’d been sent to the sin-bin in 1990. I asked Blocker about it a few years ago and he said it wasn’t the four-week suspension or $5000 fine that he remembers most. It was the reaction from his wife Cathy. She hadn’t been at the game, but she’d listened to it on the radio and came to the ground afterwards to drive him home. When he got into the car, he tried to make small talk, but she stared straight ahead until finally she said just five words: ‘Stephen, you’re a bloody idiot’. I could be wrong, but I wouldn’t be surprised if that’s exactly what Kevin Walters said to Marty Taupau on Friday night.