Paul Kent: Tom Trbojevic putting forward a case for immortality

It may seem too soon to be anointing Tom Trbojevic as the NRL’s next Immortal – not called Cam Smith – but the numbers don’t lie writes Paul Kent.

WEB art for kent immortals column by boo bailey

It was a grim feeling when the season was beginning and everybody was still on tenterhooks, as they say in the business, waiting for The Announcement: would Cameron Smith play on, or would he retire?

Once everybody got their minds past that, though, and on to more serious matters, a slow realisation came over the game.

For the first time since the NRL went silly with its revamp of the Immortals concept, the game was about to enter a season without a first-round ballot Immortal playing in the game.

For several seasons now that space was occupied by Smith, who will surely go in the first time his name appears on the ballot sheet, having dominated the game like no other player in its history.

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Art by Boo Bailey

He shared voting rights for a while, though.

Some years before Smith retired, Billy Slater was running around in the same team as Smith while, just a few seasons before that, a fellow named Thurston up there in North Queensland was also making a tidy go of living on forever, in the figurative sense.

Several readers happened upon this and sent correspondence this way asking who would be the next Immortal currently playing the game. With some embarrassment, I couldn’t find one.

Then I am watching State of Origin in Townsville on Wednesday night and the answer jumps out of the television, bright and bold.

Tom Trbojevic wrote himself a small piece of history when he became the first player in the game to score a hat-trick of tries twice in State of Origin.

It will be only a footnote to what he eventually achieves in this game.

Tom Trbojevic and Nathan Cleary celebrate yet another try. Picture: Mark Kolbe/Getty Images

The day after the game, I am asking Greg Alexander about Trbojevic’s efforts in Origin and he is saying nothing was particularly specifically put in the game plan to create opportunities for Trbojevic other than an instruction from coach Brad Fittler to go and roam.

For a genius like Trbojevic, it must have sounded like music.

Trbojevic was told if he saw something to go and chase it.

He took that literally and popped up all over the field, never more eloquently than late in the game when the ball went from halfback Nathan Cleary to five-eighth Jarome Luai, to centre Trbojevic, who rolled it on to his foot for centre Latrell Mitchell to regather and score.

The sight of the ball going out the backline from half to five-eighth to centre to centre was enough to make old men weep.

It was a stunning win and, given his importance to Manly, must have killed coach Des Hasler to leave him out of Friday night’s game against the Cowboys. Clearly Hasler thought those from North Queensland had suffered enough.

Trbojevic’s Immortal-like performance was timed perfectly for the honouring on Friday night of Bob Fulton, Manly’s original Immortal who died last month.

Tom Trbojevic is the fits player to record two Origin hat-tricks. Picture: Ian Hitchcock/Getty Images

Fulton was one of the four originals way back when the concept was a promotion for a port with a now-defunct wine company. Fair to say the concept aged better.

If there is a worry it is that not enough, including too many judges and far too many NRL officials, remember the proper history of the Immortals and why it began and what it was supposed to represent. Forget the Wikipedia version of its history, which has the history all backwards.

The late John Fordham came up with the idea of The Immortals to promote this port, with four judges, Harry Bath, Frank Hyde, Ian Heads and Tom Goodman, to decide. The promotion ran through the now-defunct Rugby League Week, where Heads was editor.

After dinner, they settled into a hotel room at the Wentworth Hotel and, in the off-the-record version, settled on their first three choices quickly but wrestled with the fourth and final until they had to break for breakfast.

The fourth ballot was a stand-off between Fulton and Graeme Langlands.

The original concept was to pick the four best players since World War II, this specific criteria chosen because the judges agreed they had to witness the players first hand to judge them and none of them trusted what footy they saw before the war.

Nothing outside playing ability was to be considered.

Since then, the concept has corrupted.

Andrew Johns (C) the 8th immortal, pictured with other immortals, Graeme Langlands, Bob Fulton, Wally Lewis and Johnny Raper.

It began when RLW announced plans to add two more Immortals, which was as much about boosting its flagging circulation as fixing the Langlands omission, with Wally Lewis also elected, and then later corrupted when playing records and even off-field contributions were argued for.

Soon after, RLW announced plans for a seventh Immortal, in this case Arthur Beetson, which privately angered the NRL. Boss David Gallop rightfully argued RLW was creating a quasi-Hall of Fame, which watered down the NRL’s own Hall, and so strongly opposed it, though he could do nothing.

In the Commission era, though, the NRL paid $2 million to own the Immortals brand – and almost immediately stuffed it up.

With little idea what the concept means, the NRL introduced a criteria to announce one or two Immortals every four years.

It chipped away at what was so special about the Immortals, its exclusivity.

The strength of the Immortals should always be measured by the quality of players who could not make it. After all, what’s it worth if everybody gets a prize?

It sounds like I am arguing against myself, pushing Trbojevic’s cause with so much of his career before him, but his presence at Manly is already profound.

Melbourne Storm legends Cameron Smith and Billy Slater at the unveiling of their bronze statues at AAMI Park. Picture: Jake Nowakowski

Smith is a lock, that is certain. He owns every record in the game and in terms of pure playing talent, his presence in the team saw Melbourne go from a 40.9 win percentage to 72.2 (a 21.3 per cent rise) every time he played.

Newcastle’s winning percentage rose from 39 per cent to 61.8 per cent (a 22.8 per cent rise) when the eighth Immortal Andrew Johns played.

Thurston went from 36.4 to 53.7 (17.3 per cent rise), Darren Lockyer took Brisbane from 34.3 to 66.6 (a 32.3 per cent rise) while Greg Inglis took the Rabbitohs from 44 to 48.4 per cent, which surprises many.

Manly’s win percentage rises from 29.7 per cent to 48.9 per cent (a 19.2 per cent lift) when Trbojevic plays. In the past three seasons, though, the difference is more stark, rising from 28.1 per cent to 73.1, a rise of 65 per cent.

That is extraordinary.

And that is better than everybody, and it suggests all Trbojevic has left to do is remain fit and continue doing what he does.

If nothing else, that early-season question is live again.

SAY what they like, Wednesday night’s decision to hit Queensland winger Kyle Feldt with a grade one danger contact charge – from a tackle that left Cameron Murray dazed and dizzy – was a classic example of reverse engineering.

As a supporter of the NRL’s new edict, which has drawn its criticism in these quarters and others, it was an example of a limp-wristed NRL unable to tough it out with the courage of their convictions.

The NRL has tried to portray there was no evidence of initial contact in the tackle before Feldt’s shoulder hit Murray’s head.

Maybe you can choose to believe that, but there is no doubt the first contact Feldt’s shoulder made was with Murray’s head.

And yet Feldt stayed on, the NRL avoided the wowsers complaining the game has gone soft because there was a sin bin in Origin, and then a little reverse engineering in the judicial room to charge the obvious contact while stating there was a belief of contact prior to the head-shoulder contact, and presto, everybody is happy.

At best, it is a technicality.

And it will not provide a shred of hope if ever a clever lawyer gets hold of it in a law court.