Why you can’t measure rugby league Immortals from different eras
YOU can look at records and statistics, but that never tells the complete story, writes PAUL CRAWLEY.
NRL
Don't miss out on the headlines from NRL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
BART Cummings said it best: you don’t compare champions, you just recognise them. That’s the problem with this Immortals debate.
How does anyone go back now and judge players between 1908 and 1946, given no one who will vote on the panel saw them play?
You can look at records and statistics. But that never tells the complete story.
And there is always this recency bias.
If you go on what people say today, Johnathan Thurston is better than Andrew Johns.
And when Joey played we said he was better than Allan Langer and Ricky Stuart, who were better than Peter Sterling.
But would you back any of them to get the better of Tommy Raudonikis?
Now Tommy never won a grand final. But Mick Cronin got to play with and against him.
“Let me put it this way,” Cronin said from his Gerringong pub.
PAUL KENT: Getting to the bottom of the Immortals debate
“If I got to pick my best side but they said they are going to give me a halfback. And they put 10 names in a hat and pulled one out.
“Well, if I end up with Tommy, I’d double my bet. If it was a one-off occasion.
“Let me tell you, if you are going into a game and Tommy is playing against those players, they are going to have a very unhappy afternoon.”
Cronin’s point was not to put down any of the others, it was simply that you had to see Tommy play to recognise his real worth.
The fact he played nine straight years for Australia is only a minor part.
The legendary boxing trainer Johnny Lewis to this day says Tommy was the greatest competitor he ever saw.
In any sport.
Now we say JT’s the greatest competitor, ever. Because JT is present.
The thing is, we don’t just judge JT’s greatness on records and statistics but what we see with our own eyes.
It only highlights the flaw in trying to judge future Immortals from the past on records and statistics.
I could think of several players in the time I’ve been watching the game who I would rate as highly as Joey and JT, for different reasons.
When Darren Lockyer retired, I thought straight away he should have been made an Immortal.
Still do.
But was Locky better than Alf? Or Brad Clyde or Brad Fittler?
If Freddy was playing today, we’d want to make him an Immortal right now.
Brett Kenny is another always left out of the debate, maybe because he didn’t have Wally Lewis’s swagger.
Yet Kenny had a record playing five-eighth against Queensland that suggested he had Wally’s measure. In 12 Origin games playing five-eighth against Wally, Bert won eight.
On the 1982 Kangaroo Tour, Kenny went away as the No. 2 five-eighth and came home as No.1.
In 1986 he was the Golden Boot winner, best player in the world.
On top of that, he won four premierships at Parramatta, scoring two tries in three consecutive grand finals.
So that record tells us if Kenny and Wally played in 1908 and not in the 1980s, we might judge them differently.
No doubt you can make a case for many players from the pre-war era. And they are worthy of recognition.
Dally Messenger was the game’s first superstar. Without him, rugby league in Australia probably doesn’t get off the ground.
You had Frank Burge and Dave Brown.
Burge was a try-scoring whiz as a forward. Get this, 146 tries in 154 games.
It was a record that stood almost 80 years until Steve Menzies bettered it. And it took Beaver a lot more games to do it.
Brown was called “the Bradman of rugby league”. Straight out of school, he played for NSW at 18 and captained Easts at 19. Captained Australia at 22.
Imagine a kid today captaining his club at 19 and his country at 22. A year younger than Ash Taylor is right now.
You go through those old books and you just wish you could have seen these blokes play.
But to go back and judge them now to determine who is an Immortal and who is not is just not possible.
The entire Immortal concept was set up as a Rugby League Week promotion to help sell magazines and port.
And the reason they only considered players from 1946 was because they only wanted to judge who they had seen play. That was back in 1981.
Now in 2018, they’re telling us they will go back and fix what was overlooked 37 years ago.
They will never do it because there is too much money involved.
But I’d love to see them scrap the Immortals, or at least take the take the focus off it, and put it where it should be: on the Hall of Fame.
Like Bart said, you don’t compare champions, you just recognise them.
PACKER’S GOT A POINT TO PROVE
HERE’S further proof just how hard it is for the NRL big boys to get recognition in Dally M voting.
Russell Packer hasn’t scored a single point after two rounds.
In the opening week, the Wests Tigers enforcer led the way to finish on top of the Sydney Roosters pack, and last weekend he backed it up against Melbourne.
The job Packer does isn’t fancy.
But answer this:
Without his input, do you think the Tigers would be unbeaten after taking on two of the competitions heavyweights?
Tomorrow night Packer goes up against the other standout prop from last week, Brisbane’s boom youngster, Tevita Pangai.
This should be one of the match-ups of the round.
Pangai also missed out on Dally M votes for his effort against North Queensland, which was as good as any prop performance we’ve seen in a long time.
One man who certainly didn’t miss Packer’s influence was rival enforcer Sam Burgess.
Asked for his thoughts on Packer so far, Burgess put it perfectly on Fox League this week.
“Russell Packer brings grit and determination,” Burgess said.
“You might look at his numbers and go he is not doing a fantastic amount compared to the Taumalolo’s and Pangai Juniors.
“But what he brings is the moments and his mindset.
“What he might impose on the other teams far outweighs the numbers you might see on the stats sheet.”
In fact, Packer’s only averaging 68 metres per game, which puts him 67th overall on the list of middle forwards.
Meanwhile, we’re told Pangai has no plans to turn his back on Tonga this year despite the 22-year-old being eligible for NSW.
ANYONE’S COMP
WE are all struggling with our tips but after two rounds one thing is clear: this is going to be the tightest and toughest competition in years.
I know we say it every year. But going into round three who would have thought St George Illawarra, New Zealand, Penrith, Wests Tigers and Newcastle would be the only unbeaten teams?
Without a win at the other end of the ladder are Canberra, Cronulla, South Sydney, Canterbury and Parramatta.
There is no standout to be premiers or wooden spooners.
Last year Melbourne were rated by many as one of the best teams in history.
But after losing three star starting players in Cooper Cronk, Jordan McLean and Tohu Harris, along with Slade Griffin, they have been brought back to the pack.
And with nine new players, the Knights are no longer the easybeats.
Every team would give themselves a chance of upsetting any rival on any given day.
While it’s been a tipster’s nightmare, it’s great football to watch.
VAL’S DILEMMA
SHANE Flanagan has done nothing wrong by moving Josh Dugan to fullback.
The fact Cronulla brought Dugan and Matt Moylan to the club showed Flanagan was concerned that Val Holmes was not going to work in the position.
Dugan went to the Sharks to play centre but he wanted to play fullback at the Dragons — that’s why he left.
Moylan can play five-eighth but his best position is fullback.
It was always going to put the heat on Holmes.
It’s like the Roosters moving in Cooper Cronk and thinking Mitchell Pearce would stay.
THUMBS UP
THE Sydney Roosters didn’t want a bar of talking about Mitchell Pearce’s return to Allianz Stadium after their win over Canterbury last Friday night — even though every TV screen at the ground had a picture of Pearce alongside Cooper Cronk plastered on it within minutes of fulltime.
But after leading Newcastle to victory on Sunday night against Canberra, Pearce happily played his part to promote the Roosters’ home game.
“Hopefully it is a big crowd,” Pearce said. “I am sure we will get plenty of Knights fans to come down.
“We seem to get a lot more than the Roosters.”
THUMBS DOWN
IT’S ironic it was a year ago this week George Peponis had a crack at the Wests Tigers when he said the drama surrounding Des Hasler’s future wouldn’t destabilise the club.
Then last weekend there was reportedly almost a stink at the Canterbury Leagues Club elections.
QLD EXPANDS
It’s good to see the state of Queensland continues to grow.
Kevvie Walters was talking to Laurie Daley on Sky Sports Radio this week when Laurie asked if Kalyn Ponga was a Queenslander.
Terry Kennedy thought Ponga was a New Zealander.
“No,” Kevvie said. “His dad is from New Zealand but his mum is Australian. He was born in Port Headland, Western Australia. So that makes him a Queenslander.”
In fairness, Kevvie was only having a laugh.
Ponga did spend a lot of his childhood in Queensland, so it’s all legit.