Knights star Danny Buderus in a class of his own

SUNDAY'S match against the Broncos is likely to be the last time we see former Test star Danny Buderus in action at Suncorp Stadium.

NEWCASTLE hooker Danny Buderus has indicated he is finished with representative football, with Sunday's match against the Broncos likely to be the last time we see the former Test star in action at Suncorp Stadium.

Buderus, 34, was NSW coach Ricky Stuart's first choice as Origin hooker but injury intervened and Robbie Farah got the nod.

Buderus said this week it was Farah's time, and he hoped the Wests Tigers star was picked for Origin II in Sydney on Wednesday week and Origin III in Brisbane on July 4.

After three seasons with Leeds in England, Buderus's chief aim in returning to the NRL was to finish his senior career where it began - as a Knight.

He will go down as one of the best of the new breed of hookers to revolutionise dummy-half play since scrums effectively became a no-contest in the mid-1980s.

Before that, a hooker's main role was to win the ball, and it was an essential part of any rugby league writer's job to keep the scrum count.

The book Inside Rugby League by former Australian hooker Ian Walsh went into graphic detail about the lot of a hooker in the 1950s-60s, with punches thrown from the second row and headbutts part and parcel of the scrum.

Walsh admitted to biting a New Zealand forward's finger to the bone after the Kiwi tried to gouge him in a scrum.

Queensland hooker Brian Fitzsimmons, a lightning-fast striker for the ball, often finished at the bottom of the scrum, out cold, in the early minutes of interstate matches in the 1970s.

There were a lot of scrums then, but the players also ran to the spot to pack down, and came in with ferocious force as the halfback tried to feed the ball. And they had to play for 80 minutes.

Then came the tragic case of Penrith prop John Farragher, who became a quadriplegic when a scrum collapsed in a match against Newtown at Henson Park in 1978.

After that scrums were cleaned up to a large degree and now they are just there as a means of restarting play.

Today the hookers often have a "boy-next-door" look.

In 1974, my captain-coach in the bush was a hooker, Milton Whybrow, who had represented Riverina from the Harden-Murrumburrah club.

Known as "The Mighty Blacks", Harden-Murrumburrah will hold their 90th anniversary reunion on June 9, and the club this week sent me a team photograph from 1962.

By 1974, Whybrow was showing more than just the signs of age, with his once straight nose, bent out of shape.

Buderus is set to retire with his looks intact, but is no less a warrior, and is deserving of a better send-off than the Knights seem set to provide.