All eyes on Greg Inglis’ form and fitness in Rabbitohs season opener
A lot is at stake for Greg Inglis this season. The noise out of Redfern has the Rabbitohs star primed to monster the Roosters but Wayne Bennett’s history with ageing stars suggests otherwise.
According to my Redfern operatives, a trusty lot as ever there were, Greg Inglis is fit and primed to monster the Sydney Roosters this Friday.
Historically speaking, “Inglis dominates rivals” is hardly groundbreaking news and certainly won’t win any awards for originality. But, given the summer just gone, more than a few seem surprised that he is being talked about in such glowing terms.
Their optimism mostly centres around Inglis’s reputation as one of the game’s great big-game players more than any recent assessment of form.
Certainly there is little evidence to recommend Inglis on recent form.
Mixed reports have followed Inglis all off-season after it got off to a poor start when he was pulled over for speeding and drink-driving last October. He left others little choice other than to sack him as Australian captain, the job over before it began.
It seemed to kickstart a spiral for Inglis.
Inglis has missed training sessions with no explanation. His chronic knee injury flared up, hampering his training when he did turn up and costing him a chance to play his way into some match fitness with a trial game.
He has had the odd little tipple over the summer. Reports surfaced and were quickly, if not irrevocably, denied that he was 15kg above his playing weight of last season. He is not the first player to go from washboard to smorgasbord over an off-season but Inglis is a player who rarely salutes first up from a spell.
“It’s been an up and down pre-season,” he told NRL.com.
“I’ve had a good chat with Wayne [Bennett] and my trainers and they all say I tick the box and that I’m ready to go.”
There was doubt there, though. There still is.
This is could be a career-defining season for Inglis, once touted as a potential Immortal.
His star burned bright early. The story is still not forgotten in Melbourne
Now, whenever Slater found space in a ball game his teammates knew enough to stop the chase and conserve whatever energy was left.
No point burning it up trying to catch the uncatchable.
So when Slater hit a gap and a young Inglis turned to chase most shook their head in sympathy, recognising another young fellow who had still to learn the ways.
Only Inglis ran him down.
Hang on, went the look around the players, this kid is different. And he was good as the billing.
Inglis quickly became what was known as the Big Four; Smith, Slater, Cronk and Inglis. When Slater was injured or suspended Inglis starred in the one jersey and when he later switched to five-eighth he was good enough to win the Clive Churchill Medal in the Storm’s 2007 premiership.
Along with a rare speed, he accelerated like a speedboat coming out of the water, he had a fend that could knock a freight train off its rails. He began to make the conversation as a future Immortal.
And then it kind of … slowed.
How far circumstances have changed will be on display Friday night. After his summer of discontent Wayne Bennett has pried Inglis away from the buffet table and pushed him to the unfamiliar position of right centre, which seems an odd move.
Most agree a fit Inglis is most damaging at fullback and, after that, at left centre, so why has Bennett moved him to right centre?
Inglis no longer has the motor to play fullback, among the game’s most demanding positions on the legs. The stiff knee and declining fitness saw to that.
Another reason for the shift could be the challenge to mark him up against the young buck, the formidable Latrell Mitchell.
A less spoken about reason could be that last season Joseph Manu handled Inglis more than adequately, a feat few ever achieved before that, and that Bennett was keen to avoid a repeat.
I gave up long ago trying to understand what Bennett is thinking. It was bad for the heart.
It could be a challenge to Inglis, the wake-up call after a torrid summer. Bennett has moved him to the bottom rung, one short of avoiding the ultimate insult of dropping him from the team altogether.
Inglis should well remember, though, that Bennett’s career is riddled with elite players pushed on when they got a little too comfortable with their place in the team, beginning and not limited to Wally Lewis in the early Broncos years.
A lot is at stake for Inglis this season.
Rightly or wrongly, legacy is often judged as much by how players finish the game as much as how they performed at the top of their game, so longevity is important.
On his side, Inglis has a champion’s heart and the first rule of sport is never knock a champion.
The second rule is odds-on, look on, but that does not belong in any conversation here.
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