The Serve

Rugby League the winner in a night for the cynics

Well wasn’t that just convenient. A player from the Blues and a player from the Maroons appear before the judiciary, a place where few find favour, yet both somehow beat the system to hoodwink their way to Suncorp Stadium.

Guess everyone is a winner then.

A night of farce and mirth, that eventually mirrored an evening at the wrestling. Sure, everyone had a fair idea what the result would be, good triumphing over evil - or in this case, players over establishment - but goodness was the lead up worth the price of admission.

Jamie Lyon’s case will go down as perhaps the most bizarre in memory. Firstly, Manly’s trick of naming a team two hours before the Blues announcement was kyboshed. We were greeted to Wednesday headlines of the Eagles preparing to try on the ‘origin versus regular game’ angle. No go fellas. Tried and failed on many occasions. To game night, and it was all hinging on Eric Grothe. If one of the enemy can vouch for this boy scout, who would sooner help a little old lady cross the road than get drive his head into the turf, then he must be alright, eh?

One minor detail. Eric turned his phone off. Whoops. Suppose a phone ringing during band practice would be off-putting.

But…Oh yes, there’s always a but. But just when the fight was slipping away, the crowd ready to throw its paper cups into the ring, solicitor Geoff Bellew plucked a technical sucker punch from nowhere. Sorry boys, you said he ‘lifted’. Sure, he’s turned the attacker over like the London Eye, but I don’t see a lift.

Bellew looked like he’d suddenly found a steel chair at the bottom of the turnbuckle.

Case dismissed.

Once the lawyer smashed that steel chair over the prosecutors head, the referee had no choice but to grudgingly count the poor fellow out. It is reprehensible that the review panel, which has four different types of ‘dangerous lift’ to choose from, somehow picked the wrong one.

Ding, ding, ding.

Cue the music.

Earlier Dallas Johnson’s team didn’t even bother with the fancy lawyers, going with football manager Dean Lance and Mal Meninga. They were told that a State Of Origin game was no defence, yet there was Mal - nowhere near Olympic Park when the incident took place mind you - filling out a chair as only Mal can. He just sat upright, but his physical presence is still magnificent. Thirteen years after retiring. So forceful. So Intimidating. Still don’t know why he was there, however I was convinced.

The defense itself wasn’t particularity inspiring, one journalist dubbing it ‘schoolboy-esque’. A bunch of similar tackles were played on the projector. Technical mumbo-jumbo flooded the air in what looked an effort to impress the judges, er, panel.

It’s a method which has proven to be a surefire passage to oblivion.

Not tonight.

Apparently a fierce critic of the NRL suggested that Lyon was charged in the first place simply to take attention away from the league’s out of court settlement with sponsor Telstra.

A bold claim, but that conspirator will sleep easy tonight.