NRL referee Adam Gee’s painful Cooper Cronk moment

He doesn’t want to be compared to Cooper Cronk’s grand final heroics but NRL referee Adam Gee has proven to be equally as resilient, after refereeing for more than half an hour with a fractured shoulder.

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He doesn’t want to be compared to champion halfback Cooper Cronk and his grand final heroics but NRL referee Adam Gee has proven to be equally as resilient.

A story of incredible courage emerged last weekend in that Gee refereed the final 35 minutes of the Canberra Raiders’ match against Melbourne Storm with a fractured shoulder.

The referee fell heavily after a collision with Canberra second-rower Elliott Whitehead and lost feeling in his right arm, the one he uses to blow penalties. X-rays the following day revealed the fracture that will sideline him for four to six weeks.

“I didn’t see Elliott and he didn’t see me,” Gee said. “It was just one of those accidents.

“My arm went numb for about five minutes and I thought it was muscle or ligament damage.

“The adrenaline is going and you’re concentrating so much you don’t even think about it.

“When I cooled down, I couldn’t move my arm above my waist.”

I showed Gee’s MRI scan to a professor of orthopaedics who spoke on the condition of anonymity. “Even walking with that injury is incredibly painful,” he said.

Gee laughed off any comparison to Cronk playing in the grand final with a broken shoulder.

“Don’t ever put me in the category of Cooper,” Gee said. “That was phenomenal what he did. Just amazing.

“I don’t make tackles or get tackled. I just put my arm up every now and then to blow a penalty. There’s a slight difference.”