Wests Tigers players thought captain Moses Mbye had a heart attack
As the news started to filter out of Perth last Friday about Moses Mbye’s ‘scary’ incident, Wests Tigers players feared the worst after misinterpreting a tweet describing their teammate’s condition.
NRL
Don't miss out on the headlines from NRL. Followed categories will be added to My News.
It was the text message that sent a collective sigh of relief all over Concord.
As the news started to filter out of Perth last Friday about Moses Mbye, Wests Tigers players initially thought their captain had suffered a devastating heart attack.
“The tweet that everyone first saw made it seem like he had a heart attack or something like that,” Tigers winger Corey Thompson said.
Concerned and confused players turned to each other to try and figure out exactly what happened to Mbye after his near death experience.
Mbye, who was in Queensland camp, hadn’t suffered a heart attack but another medical episode potentially as lethal. The skipper went into anaphylactic shock after having an allergic reaction.
After an initial moment of panic, Thompson revealed Mbye reached out to his club teammates via their group WhatsApp chat to reassure them he would make a full recovery.
“He reached out to us pretty early. Once we first read the news, he replied within 10 minutes saying he was all right. At first we were all like ‘bloody hell, what’s happened here?’, we just read he almost died. But when he reached out it was a big relief,” Thompson said.
The Maroons utility returned to Concord on Tuesday for the first to time since the incident and his teammates were full of questions about the episode.
“I can’t even pronounce the word [anaphylactic], so I asked him this morning about it. Then we asked him if we was playing this morning and he said he’s feeling good,” Thompson said.
Halfback Luke Brooks said the cause of the Mbye’s allergic reaction is still unknown.
“It was scary. But it was good to see he was able to laugh about it this morning and that was good to see,” Brooke said.
The Tigers will take on South Sydney at Bankwest Stadium on Thursday night and all eight players who took part in last weekend’s representative round including Mbye, Benji Marshall, Robbie Farah and Esan Marsters will play.
“Everyone of those guys got through the games all right, so they’ll back up,” Brooks said.
Brooks is expecting his side to capitalise on their 27-26 golden point win against North Queensland two weeks ago. The Tigers have struggled to find points this year and were kept scoreless by the Raiders in round 13. Michael Maguire’s men have only scored 41 tries in comparison ladder leaders Melbourne have scored 57 tries.
“I think a lot of the time we don’t score our defence is off. If our defence is on it brings our attack in the game and then we can start to find a few more points. But we are working hard on our attack and trying to come up with ways we think will help us score points,” Brooks said.
Originally published as Wests Tigers players thought captain Moses Mbye had a heart attack