Ryan Papenhuyzen’s gift for the extraordinary comes from his persistence

Melbourne rookie Ryan Papenhuyzen has always had the skills to give his opposition chills — but it’s this one special moment that left Freddy Fittler lost for words.

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So, you want to know about Ryan Papenhuyzen?

Cool, find video of the kick.

Or at least that’s the advice from Jamie Feeney, the old Melbourne forward now working with NSW Rugby League.

“Honestly, you gotta see it,” Feeney says.

“I’m a little vague on the details — it happened years ago — but I remember it starting with a footy being grubbered at ‘Papz’.”

WATCH THE VIDEO ABOVE TO SEE ‘THE KICK’

And from there?

“He knocks the ball up with his foot,” Feeney continues. “Then juggles it, kicks it at a goalpost, hits … with the ball dropping into an Otto bin beneath.”

Which sounds impossible, right?

Apparently not.

Papenhuyzen has never had size on his side.

“No, it’s true,” says St George Illawarra livewire Jai Field, a touch footy teammate for years. “I’ve seen the video too. Crazy.”.

Same deal Adam Doueihi.

The South Sydney playmaker recalling not only the kick, but how his entire schoolboy rugby career was spent against the prodigious Oakhill College captain.

“We trialled for Balmain together, too,” Doueihi says. “I can still remember as Ryan arrived thinking, ‘Geez, I hope he doesn’t want my spot’.”

And that trial, it was still a few years before the kick — footage of which Brad Fittler, coincidentally, has also been chasing this week.

For the NSW Origin coach, he encouraged said play — back three years when he not only oversaw the Blues Pathways Program, but regularly offered $200 Asics vouchers for any trick shot that impressed him.

And in 2015, as a NSW U/18 player, Papz did exactly that.

His lift, juggle, kick, ding! play so unbelievable, Fittler will likely have Channel 9 air it before Thursday Night Football, aware that inside Melbourne’s AAMI Park against Wests Tigers, Papenhuyzen will finally make his starting NRL debut.

Papenhuyzen was an Australian representative as a touch footballer.

He faces the same club, you should know, who two years ago let him walk. Convinced Papenhuyzen was a reserve grader. And with bad hamstrings.

Just as a few years before that, it was Parramatta who refused to pick the skinny, white kid from Kellyville because, well, he was a skinny white kid from Kellyville.

“So Ryan came to us,” says Michael Frain, his Balmain Harold Matthews coach. “And, yeah, he was small, that’s always been his issue.

“But he’s lightening fast, and with acceleration you can’t teach.”

Asked for a standout memory however, and the coach who also mentored Papenhuyzen at club level laughs: “One? Over the years, Ryan won us a hundred games.”

Just as in Magic Round last week, he helped Melbourne maul those Eels who once thought him too small.

Off the bench for only his fifth NRL appearance, Papenhuyzen starred in a cameo of 30 minutes — scoring one try and orchestrating three more, while also making six tackle busts, three linebreaks and 131m.

So good that with Jahrome Hughes now sidelined with concussion, Papz gets a crack at that second club who brushed him.

Which has many people asking the same question: Who the bloody hell is he?

“He’s a gun,” laughs Roosters backrower Victor Radley, a longtime junior rival. And in “a league of his own”, according to those headlines greeting a 2015 New Local nomination for Junior Sports Star.

Indeed, as a Dundas Shamrock, Papenhuyzen once chipped, regathered, then chipped and regathered for a try.

Countless more times, attacking the shortest of short sides.

“His pet play,” Frain recalls. “No matter how small the gap, Ryan loved taking on the blindside … and burning whoever was there.”

And so at this point, we ask the coach about the kick — the grubber, the juggle, the strike, even the bin.

To which, he pauses slightly.

“Nah, that’s not right,” Frain says, our yarn suddenly in doubt.

“Ryan never landed the ball in a bin … it was a shopping trolley”.

Which, we discover early Tuesday morning, is right.

When shortly after NSWRL media guru Matt Buxton uncovers said video from somewhere in his files, he then sends it on saying, “You’ve really got to see this yourself”.

Which is true.

If only to know that while Papenhuyzen is the third Tigers flyer to join Melbourne in recent years — after both Marika Koroibete and Josh Addo-Carr — he’s still not quite the resurrection project for which coach Craig Bellamy is now famed.

Or at least not the same yarn as, say, Clint Newton, Bryan Norrie, even Blake Green.

Still only 20, Papenhuyzen looms among the quickest players in the NRL.

An attacker too, Doueihi insists, “who just knows how to get through”.

At touch footy, he was a freak. In rugby, a schoolboy star.

And given his ability to land that Steeden in a shopping cart … well, it’s hardly Bellamy hauling Norrie from bush footy in Wagga.

Still, what links them all is the characteristic Bellamy covets most.

“When I was scouting for Craig on the Central Coast,” Feeney says, “his first question was always: ‘Are they tough?’.

“Asked it every time.

“And while Papz isn’t big physically, he’s definitely tough.”

Which is why it doesn’t matter that he weighs 80kg. Or that those hamstrings tore twice in Under-20s.

“Because his work ethic,” insists Frain, “is incredible.”

A truth which, last year, kept Papenhuyzen positive in Melbourne as he not only played behind a fella named Billy Slater, but flew hours for games with Sunshine Coast Falcons.

Same now in 2019, despite the emergence of Hughes and Scott Drinkwater.

Papenhuyzen will make his starting debut against the Tigers. AAP Image/Darren England.

“And that hard work,” says Addo-Carr, “it’s paying off.”

Always has.

Like as in SG Ball, when he regularly completed the 7km Bay Run in 26 minutes, sprinting all the way. Or today, mixing the pressures of NRL with all the work required by a university business degree.

Even the kick, it goes only 14 seconds, total.

At the start, Papenhuyzen standing shirtless and in a bright yellow legionnaires hat, some 30m from the sticks.

Then from somewhere out of shot, a mate grubbers the Steeden his way.

Which is when, just like Feeney says, Papz taps the ball up with his foot, then his knee, then his foot again.

Then kicks … hits the right upright … and, tink, into a shopping trolley beneath.

And how long it took to perfect? Who knows?

Likely more than 14 seconds.

For this is the story of Ryan Papenhuyzen, remember. A kid who owns his viral moment, but only after persisting through all the kicks that missed.

Originally published as Ryan Papenhuyzen’s gift for the extraordinary comes from his persistence