NRL 2021: Best rugby league sledgers, sledges | Paul Kent

After Will Chambers came under fire his tirade of abuse against Manly’s Dylan Walker, PAUL KENT analyses some of the NRL’s best ever sledgers.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - MAY 21: Will Chambers of the Sharks looks on during the round 11 NRL match between the Cronulla Sharks and the St George Illawarra Dragons at Netstrata Jubilee Stadium on May 21, 2021, in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

It will come with some degree of heat to mount a defence for Will Chambers’ verbal attack on Dylan Walker in the last round, which made for particularly good viewing for the lip-readers among us.

Something about “pashing your missus”, or so it read.

Chambers has always been world ranked when it comes to sledging.

It was a strategy celebrated at Melbourne where he often targeted the big reputation in the opposition and then set about mentally dismantling him until he was no longer effective.

Chambers’ coach Josh Hannay was less accepting than Chambers’ teammates last Monday, though, when he disapproved of Chambers’ antics.

“He probably let his emotions get the better of him there,” Hannay said afterwards.

“When you are behind on the scoreboard, I am loathe for our guys to be too chirpy.”

Hannay is as country as straw, though, where life is gentler, and so can be forgiven for missing the point.

Sledging, when done right, is about shifting the mental edge into your favour.

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Will Chambers has always been a great sledger, but his coach Josh Hannay didn’t approve of his antics against Manly. Art by Boo Bailey.

The Sharks were behind on the scoreline and Chambers recognised they were looking for something to spark an emotional lift and so he delivered, first by physically blindsiding Walker with a solid shot and then verbally to ensure Walker knew there was more coming.

Chambers is considered the undisputed king in the modern NRL, one so adept at sledging he is considered ambidextrous: he can sledge whether in front or behind.

The small comfort for Walker is that sledging is often cyclical. What goes around, as they say, comes around.

Andrew “Joey” Johns scored 23 points in his debut for the Knights and every witness said the hype was real.

The next week the Knights took on the lowly placed Western Suburbs and Paul Langmack, a champion on the verbal, and Jason Alchin sledged Johns all game.

Clearly affected, it still ranks as one of the worst games of his career as Johns played with a clear intent to counter their sledges.

The beauty of it was that Johns learned the value of a well-placed insult and soon began sharpening his own tongue with a strop.

Johns knocked on one day and was arguing with referee Bill Harrigan over it when Harrigan, by now annoyed, threatened to sin bin him if he continued.

One of the opposition props congratulated Bill on his stance, which irked Johns.

“You’re teammates are right about you, you are a dickhead,” Johns said.

The best sledges have a dual impact. Johns quietened the prop while also causing him to doubt his teammates.

Andrew Johns was the target of sledges early in his career, but went on to become an expert sledger himself.

Another time early on in Johns’ career he came up against the Raiders, and Ricky Stuart and Laurie Daley spent the whole game calling Andrew “Matty” and calling Matty “Andrew”.

Just enough to be irritable.

By then, though, they had learned the best two pieces of advice coming into the NRL: the first, to defend well, because if you don’t they will run at you your whole career, and the second, to not show yourself being affected by sledging, otherwise they will never stop.

Matty Johns copped the tip and later in his career used to send Craig Field nuts during a game because he and Andrew used to call Darrell “Tricky” Trindall “Fieldsy” while calling Field “Tricky”.

Fields would spend the game blowing up at their disrespect. “I’m not Tricky!”

When Matty Johns was on the way out at Newcastle, the club claiming there was no room in the salary cap to re-sign him, Johns was subjected to a merciless grilling by Stuart, who had moved to Canterbury.

All game Stuart attacked Joey for signing his recent contract.

“What about you, taking all your brother’s money …” he said. “What about you, forcing your brother to England …”

Then Joey chipped and regathered, beat three and scored and, as the Bulldogs jogged down to take their place for the conversion, Stuart passed by Matthew.

“You’re on your own,” he said.

To continue further would have been to embarrass himself.

Ricky Stuart has a quick tongue and came up with some great sledges on the fly.

When the Raiders were reigning champions, they opened the new ARL season in 1995 against the South Queensland Crushers who, as a new club in the expanded league, could be forgiven for their wet-eared naivety.

At one point, Stuart, who came at you like a storm trooper’s fight song, had three players on the go at once. As they waited for a scrum to be fed, and Stuart was lashing new skipper Mario Fenech, Scott Sattler got irritated by Stuart’s relentless attacks and pulled his head out of the scrum.

“Ricky, just feed the ball,” he said.

In the front row, Crushers prop Jeff Wittenberg agreed.

“Yes!” he roared. “Just feed the ball, you nine-ball.”

Stuart looked at Sattler, the son of South Sydney legend John Sattler, in just his eighth start in the top grade, and Wittenberg, the son of former St George international John Wittenberg, in just his second start, and summed it up in one cold beat of the heart.

“Look at you two attempted chips off the old block,” he said, dismissing them instantly.

What was impressive was not the insult itself but how quickly Stuart, identifying two young men desperate to emulate their fathers, calculated it.

“It just crushed us,” said Sattler, who also claimed Joey Johns was world class.

“Joey could make you feel like you couldn’t play at all,” he said. “He’d tell you that you had two left legs.”

Former Souths coach and player Craig Coleman was another notorious sledger.

Scrums were dangerous places.

Benny Elias was particularly dangerous around scrums, where he had a captive audience.

Whenever the Tigers played Souths, Rabbitohs halfback Craig Coleman would set to work on Paul Sironen, nominating him whenever he was about to run.

“Here she comes! Here she comes!” he would say to his teammates.

One afternoon Sironen aimed for Coleman and went over the top of him and it pleased Blocker Roach considerably.

“There she goes! There she goes!” said Blocker.

Coleman was one of the great sledgers, comforted by the deal he had with teammate Les Davidson.

“I always said ‘Les, I’ll do your talking and you do my fighting’,” Coleman says, and the arrangement survived happily that way.

Having played enough with Andrew Johns at Newcastle to learn from him, Peter Shiels was playing at St Helens and came up against Matthew, by now having made that move to England.

The local media carried the story on the two former teammates, so close Sheils is godfather to Matt’s son Cooper, now coming up against each other in England.

Alongside Matthew in the Wigan team was Andy Farrell, a particularly talented lock but one born with a delicate skin.

In a fiery game, Shiels hit Farrell early and as he got to his feet he looked across the advantage line and took the tip from Andrew’s old play sheet.

“You’re right about that bloke, Matty,” Shiels said to Johns. “He is a f…wit.”

Farrell turned on Matthew, filthy at the lack of loyalty from his new teammate.

The beauty of it was that Johns had never said a word to Sheils.

JUST IGNORE THE HATERS

Some years back, an NRL player was kicking stones at training, his mood such that one of his senior teammates became concerned.

After constant questions, the player finally held out his phone.

“Look at this,” he said, showing him a social media post where some anonymous jerk had given him a serve.

The teammate, somewhat older and more thick-skinned, shook his head.

“See that bloke over there?” he said, pointing to a fan in the stands there to watch them train.

“If that bloke there said to you what this guy has on Twitter, you’d say to him who gives a f… what you think. But because some blokes says it on Twitter, you take it to heart.”

The problem for many players on social media is they go there to read the praise about themselves. And because they validate the praise, they are unable to stop validating the abuse.

For the Broncos to call in the NRL Integrity Unit to investigate social media abuse against Jordan Riki, Tesi Niu and Tyson Gamble is a waste of the game’s resources.

And arguments that the players shouldn’t have to close their accounts, or stay off social media because it would mean the social twits have beaten them, are absurd.

By calling in the Integrity Unit, they already have.

Originally published as NRL 2021: Best rugby league sledgers, sledges | Paul Kent