Campo’s Corner: Where Payne Haas fits in with the greatest rookies of all time
Why Payne Haas is in Tim Smith country, the end of the Knights and Nathan Brown and another monster week of #BigManSeason action - this week’s Campo’s Corner has it all.
Broncos
Don't miss out on the headlines from Broncos. Followed categories will be added to My News.
LATE MAIL: Who’s in, who’s out for Round 23
The only thing more irregular than the long list of gun rookies in the NRL this season is how the race for rookie of the year isn’t close at all.
Any other year someone like Bronson Xerri would be a walk-up start. Briton Nikora has become a Test player and he won’t get it either. Dylan Brown might join Nikora in the Kiwi side at year’s end and he’s no hope.
Maika Sivo is a good shot of claiming winger of the year but won’t double up. Chanel Harris-Tavita, Brian To’o, Ryan Papenhuyzen and Bailey Simonsson have all impressed, as have Brent Naden, Corey Horsburgh, Tom Flegler, Thomas Mikaele, Justin Olam, Mitch Kenny and Liam Martin.
But there’s only one guy worth mentioning for the big award and that’s Payne Haas.
Haas, who played three games last year but remains eligible for rookie of the year, isn’t just the outstanding rookie of this season but maybe of any season. The big Bronco is second among all forwards for run metres, and eighth among all players. He’s sixth in the league for tackle busts, first among forwards.
Stream over 50 sports live & anytime on your TV or favourite device with KAYO SPORTS. The biggest Aussie sports and the best from overseas. Just $25/month. No lock-in contract. `Get your 14 day free trial!
He averages a little over 61 minutes per game and at just 19 he already looks like an overwhelming physical force. Haas is a literal giant, in who’s shadow nothing good nor godly will ever grow.
Quite simply, Haas is one of those rare players for whom the pre-debut hype is justified. It’s at the point where tall tales are not only told, but believed. Haas once flipped a car with his bare hands. Haas took on James Roberts in a 100 metre sprint and won. Haas wrestled the Undertaker and Kurt Angle in the same night – and beat them both. Haas was chased by every single club in the league when he was 16 – that last one’s actually true.
His try against Penrith was the capper on a magnificent performance. Just 20 games into his career he is already close to the best player at the Broncos and may well be the best prop in the league. David Klemmer is a great player enjoying a top season in a bad side, Josh Papalii can also count himself among the game’s elite front rowers, as can Martin Taupau, Addin Fonua-Blake, Sio Siua Taukeiaho and Jesse Bromwich.
Andrew Fifita, Paul Vaughan, Jesse Bromwich and Nelson Asofa-Solomona are also right up there, Moeaki Fotuaika is another young gun with a huge future and James Tamou has improbably had the best year of his career in his 11th season.
But could any of them have scored the try Haas did on the weekend? Fifita perhaps, in his fighting prime. Vaughan maybe. That’s about it. Haas’ remarkable appetite for work, his strength and footwork at the line, and the acceleration he has for a big man make him the total package. Even if Haas never improves he’ll be one of the game’s best middles for a very long time.
LISTEN! In this week’s episode of the Matty Johns Podcast, Matty, Kenty and Finchy look at the challenge confronting the Knights, name their team of the decade and ask who wins an NRL coaches fight night.
Subscribe to the Matty Johns podcast on iTunes, Spotify, or Google Podcasts.
I stand by my criticism of his selection for Origin I – seven good games (and 10 games in total) is not enough to earn a rep jersey and Haas looked off the pace after about 15 minutes – but right now Haas is shaping as a possible Test debutant and with a full season of this kind of play under his belt it’s impossible to say he wouldn’t deserve it.
The question now for Haas isn’t if he’ll win rookie of the year, or even if he’ll win prop of the year, but where he ranks among the greatest rookies of all time. A weighty statement for sure, but we’re in the midst of something historic.
The last teenage forward to have such an impact on the premiership was Brad Clyde, who made his Origin and Test debut as a 19-year-old in 1989 before going on to win the Clive Churchill Medal in Canberra’s grand final victory. Some may point to Sonny Bill Williams but his impact as a rookie is larger in memory than in fact.
Williams did enjoy an exhilarating initial campaign with the Bulldogs in 2004 but he only played 15 games, started just two and didn’t have the same impact as the best rookie of that year - Brisbane’s Karmichael Hunt.
There are five truly outstanding debut seasons since rookie of the year became an official award in 1980. Haas is in the territory of Daly Cherry-Evans in 2011, Israel Folau in 2007, Tim Smith in 2005, Steve Menzies in 1994 and Michael Potter in 1984.
Cherry-Evans made history as the first rookie halfback to win a premiership since Steve Martin in 1978 and made his Test debut at the end of the season. He was no mere passenger in that talented Sea Eagles side either – Cherry-Evans scored a try, set up another and was one of Manly’s best in the grand final win over the Warriors. He’s only bettered his 20 try assists from that season twice.
Whatever else Folau has become in the years since he tore the league apart in 2007 the fact remains he was an incredible athlete, footballer and tryscorer. He never bettered the 21 tries he scored that season, a Melbourne club record at the time, and at season’s end he was the youngest Australian player of all time (a record since beaten by, of all players, Sione Mata’utia). Folau was one of many weapons in a ludicrously overpowered Melbourne team (which was latter stripped of their premiership) but Folau was one of those rare players who appeared fully-formed – only six players at the time had ever scored 20 or more tries in their rookie season and even now only eight players have done it in 111 seasons.
Menzies played six matches in 1993 but was still eligible for rookie of the year, according to the rules of the time in 1994, and hit the league like a bolt of lightning. He grabbed 16 tries from the second row, went on the last Kangaroo Tour as a 20-year-old and finished two points off the winner of the Rothman’s Medal, which was the official player of the year award at the time.
There’s only one rookie who ever won a major player of the year award and it’s Michael Potter. As a 19-year-old in 1984, after playing one game the previous year, Potter won the Dally M. Not Dally M rookie of the year, I’m talking the big one. For reasons passing understanding, Potter won player of the year but not rookie of the year after a superb season at fullback for Canterbury. Potter might not be remembered as fondly as some of the other contenders but nobody else has ever done what he’s done, and that means a lot.
Which brings us to Smith, the patron saint of red hot rookies who burn twice as bright for half as long.
There is precious little publicly available footage of Smith, he never went on to play Origin or Test footy and he was spent as a serious force in the league by 2008, when he was still just 23. But his first season was truly astonishing – as part of the 2005 Parramatta side that claimed the minor premiership, Smith recorded 40 try assists. That’s the record – not the record for rookies, the record for any player on any team as far back as try assists were recorded.
Nobody else has ever cracked 40 – when Johnathan Thurston won the Dally M in 2015 he had 37. Cooper Cronk is in second place behind Smith with 38 in 2012. Mitchell Moses has 29 this year for Parra, good for 17th on the all timescale, so he’d need 11 in his last three games to match what a 20-year-old did in his first season. Smith and Thurston were supposed to be the new Langer and Stuart – it didn’t work out that way, but that’s how it seemed at the time.
Smith was the total package when it came to raw attacking skills and became an instant star on the back of his slick passing game and inventive kicking, especially banana kicks, which he used even more frequently than the Johns brothers. Smith was gone as quickly as he arrived and never again were things as good as they were that season, but he’ll live forever as, for my money, the best rookie player of all time.
Haas still has some games to play but right now this is the company he keeps. Right now I have him ahead of Folau but behind the other four – with Smith and Potter still out in front as the best rookies ever. But the fact this is even a conversation to be had is a mark of Haas’ incredible ability and proof that even in a sport as consumed with hype and potential as rugby league that sometimes – not often, but sometimes – even the grandest hyperbole can be proven true.
BROWN’S KNIGHTMARE HAD TO END
Way back in the first ever edition of Campo’s Corner (God, we were all so much younger then) it seemed as though Nathan Brown’s future was hanging by a thread. The Knights were in the midst of a five-game losing streak and now, after breaking an entirely different six-match losing streak, Brown has announced he will leave the club by mutual decision at the end of the season.
Brown’s major failure at the Knights was not his inability to pull together a good squad – the Knights have enough talent to make the top eight this season and if they fail to do so they have underachieved. He has recruited well in landing Kalyn Ponga, David Klemmer and Mitchell Pearce, those are three players a club can be built around. There have been some high-profile misses (for all the talk that Wayne Bennett abandoned the Knights in a precarious financial position, throwing money at unproven or subpar players has remained a constant of the rebuilding years) but claiming big scalps on the transfer market has been one of Brown’s strengths over the last two seasons.
Where Brown has fallen down is his inability to take homegrown players and turn them into first graders, or from lapses of judgment when it comes to players who need to fill out his roster. Since he took over as coach in 2016, 18 players have made their first grade debut for the Knights. Of those 18 only Daniel Saifiti is a regular first grader with the Knights.
Has Mitch Barnett become the best player he can be under Brown? Have Danny Levi and Sione Mata’utia? Brock Lamb is the most talented junior to come through the club in the last five years – he left under a cloud with a bad attitude, but his talent was undeniable and more should have been done to keep him.
Here are some of the names the Knights have brought through under Brown and their current status. Josh Starling, Anthony Tupou and Jacob Lillyman, all good players in their time, played a combined 32 games for the club. Jamie Buhrer isn’t a regular top grader anymore. Herman Ese’ese is reportedly being shopped around, as is James Gavet after less than one year. Jesse Ramien is already gone for reasons that are still unclear, which along with Levi’s stagnation and Lamb’s exit, ranks among Brown’s biggest failures.
That’s to say nothing of Brown’s inability to find the combination of players he wants, especially around the spine. He sanctioned Kalyn Ponga’s move to five-eighth, then abandoned it after two and a half games. Mitchell Pearce has had four different halves partners this year. Levi has gone from New Zealand Test hooker to barely a first grader. Connor Watson hasn’t spent more than a month in any one position all year.
It would be wrong to peg Brown as the cause of all of Newcastle’s troubles. The Hunter is still one of the strongest junior nurseries in the rugby league world but too often the best players are ending up at other clubs. The constant losing created a crippling mentality where mistakes were OK because what difference could it possibly make when you’re down by 40 anyway? Because expectations were so low it was easy for players to believe they were big fish in small ponds and slacken off as a result – it seems likely this is what happened with Lamb and Levi especially.
Brown has not existed in a vacuum but at some point you are what your record says you are, and Brown has the worst winning percentage of any coach with more than 200 games. It’s a record that is unlikely to be challenged. The Knights might still make the finals this year, and even if they do have more success next season there will be misguided takes that it’s still “Brown’s team” but it’s been Brown’s team the whole time, and as the old saying goes any fool can knock down a barn but it takes a carpenter to build one.
Blaming Wayne Bennett, as Brown seemed to do in his press conference on Wednesday, is a cop out. It’s now been five full seasons since Bennett was at Newcastle and there was a coach in-between him and Brown. There is no doubt Bennett did not leave the Knights in great shape but the club has had more than enough time to dig themselves out. The claims Brown has completed the rebuild and turned Newcastle into contenders doesn’t ring true either - why put in the hard yards, “take the bullets” as Brown put it, then leave when it’s time to reap the rewards? He didn’t get shot out of the goodness of his heart.
It’s also a mistake to claim Brown has turned the Knights into a contender, because if he did they’d be contending. There are raw materials here, but they are formless and unshaped.
For the first time since Brown took the helm, the Knights had real, tangible expectations this year and they’ve collapsed under the weight of them. Brown can take them no further and moving on is the right path for the club to take but pretending he’s a great martyr or rebuilding genius is wide of the mark.
BENNETT’S BATTLES
Just a quick one on South Sydney’s recent struggles – here’s Wayne Bennett’s record in the last 10 weeks of the regular season year by year since 2011
2011: Four wins, six losses
2012: Five wins, five losses
2013: Six wins, three losses, one draw
2014: Seven wins, three losses
2015: Six wins, four losses
2016: Six wins, four losses
2017: Seven wins, three losses
2018: Seven wins, three losses
2019: Three wins, four losses
The form seems to indicate South Sydney can still rally. Even with his worst Knights teams, Bennett coached-sides generally finish the year well – but the Rabbitohs have been ailing for weeks now, with their last glimpse of their best coming way back in Round 11, which was in May, before Origin I. Bennett is no stranger to Origin ripping the heart out of his team and it may have done so again given Cody Walker hasn’t looked the same since he was dumped after Game I. What does all of this mean? Probably nothing. But maybe, just maybe, it means something.
GOLDEN HOMBRE
Is there anything more thrilling than when a big man gets into the clear and attempts an ill-advised dummy, or perhaps a chip kick?
Is there anything greater than when a large lad decides the time has come for him to show the world the ball skills he knows lurk deep within?
Is there anything that lifts the spirit more than a hefty fellow crashing across the stripe for his second NRL try in his 179th first grade match?
I say no, and to honour these big fellas each and every week of the year, which many have dubbed #BigManSeason, we hand out The Golden Hombre, named after Todd Payten, the biggest halfback God ever created.
It was a truly incredible week for the big boys – we had Haas running 50 metres to score and Josh Papalii crashing over to secure Canberra’s unbelievable comeback win over the Storm. Then we peaked on Sunday when Luciano Leilua deputised in the halves for the Dragons for the last 30 minutes. Big Lucky scored a try, nearly set up a couple and proved a truth we already knew – that forwards are better halves than halves can ever be.
The Hombre shall be cut in three, and each man receives a third.
A GUY YOU SHOULD KNOW
The NRL needs more Papua New Guineans – they’re good for the soul if nothing else – and it’s only fitting that Melbourne, once the home of the great Marcus Bai, have landed another Kumul in Justin Olam.
The first player to come through the PNG Hunters to make the NRL, Olam has improved with every game he’s played this season and impressed with his speed, power and physicality. The Storm do a better job of incubating players in reserve grade than any other club and players like Olam are the result.
The Sisene man was allowed to work on his game for the Sunshine Coast Falcons until he was ready for the top grade, and the Storm are now reaping the rewards. It takes time for Papua New Guineans to adapt to the NRL (the change in environment and lifestyle is gargantuan) but it’s worth it – they play without fear and what they may lack in refinement as footballers they make up for in enthusiasm. There’s a whole country up there dying for a chance and in Olam they have a new hero.
Originally published as Campo’s Corner: Where Payne Haas fits in with the greatest rookies of all time
What Maguire, Broncos can learn from grand final masterclass
Michael Maguire was in the stands for Penrith’s epic grand final win. There was plenty for the new Broncos coach to ponder, writes ROBERT CRADDOCK.
Broncos’ Bellamy blunder: How Brisbane fumbled Bennett successor
It’s the sliding doors moment that cost Brisbane the signing of Craig Bellamy and put Melbourne on the path to a two-decade dynasty. See the inside story of how the Broncos botched their Wayne Bennett succession plan.