The hatter is in the huyzen
Ryan Papenhuyzen is mad. Ryan Papenhuyzen is insane. Ryan Papenhuyzen is utterly
bonkers. To recap: Ryan Papenhuyzen is more mental than the mad hatter himself.
Watch eighty minutes of Papenhuyzen plying his trade and you see a madman
twisting and contorting his body as he smashes himself yet again into three
defenders. Such a hammering does he take the lad might like to find himself a
woman very soon, for if he keeps soaking this punishment up for another couple
of years, he will be not more than a busted flush on so many different levels.
He sure will not be the Fonz in the front of a mirror going “Heyyyy”. Brilliant
he may be. A try scoring messiah he is. And a consummate team man always at hand
to aide his forwards on their mission to escape their own half he is. But an
indestructible object he will not be for all eternity. His being may be
malleable enough at this young stage of his career but keep this up and
eventually limbs may be torn asunder and scattered upon the many territories of
NRL stadiums.
A sickly height
With four minutes of the match to play and the scores level at twelve a piece,
Parramatta put a high kick up, landing some twenty metres from the Storm’s goal
line on their right edge. Or, at least, it would have landed had Parramatta
winger Maika Sivo not outjumped all and sundry, caught said shiny little diamond
and sprinted twenty metres to dive over and score the match winning try. And
what did we learn from this? Well, maybe, that one of those sundry, George
Jennings, may like to take Van Halen’s advice and jump instead of keeping his
feet firmly planted to Terra Firma. Jennings may be wise to change his accent to
ascent and climb the nodes of rare air and contest this heightened malaise of
altitude sickness. Even if Jennings drops the pill, he has made it less likely
for Sivo to have his way with the encounter. And one of Jennings teammates might
then have been able to tidy the loose ball up and save the day – Or in this
case, night. He didn’t, they couldn’t, Sivo made a star of himself.
