The most infamous sequence in rugby league will finally be snapped on Sunday, when Manly half Luke Brooks runs out to play Canterbury in the NRL elimination final at Homebush. The 29-year-old has played 229 first grade games. His 230th will be his first appearance in a final.
“I can’t wait, this is why I signed with Manly, I wanted to play in these big games,” Brooks told Triple M this week. “To be able to play my first finals game this year, I honestly can’t wait, it’s going to be a massive crowd, the Dogs haven’t been in the finals for a long time, we know their fans get behind them, and hopefully a lot of Manly fans will be out there as well.”
Few would deny him his moment. The sometimes brilliant, one-time Dally M halfback of the year was for a decade earmarked as the man to end the Wests Tigers’ run of woe – until he finally decided to cut ties with his junior club in the off-season and move to the northern beaches.
Formally now a five-eighth playing off Maroons captain Daly Cherry-Evans, Brooks has been effective in his first season at Brookvale. He has completed 80 minutes in every match, and his 15 try assists put him just outside the top 10 among NRL’s best creators. His much-vaunted running game has added another weapon for the Sea Eagles who loom as dangerous outsiders in the premiership race.
In fact, only Dylan Brown, Jack Wighton, Jahrome Hughes and Lachlan Galvin – the man who has replaced him in the Tigers halves – have run for more metres than Brooks among 6s and 7s this season.
But away from personal statistics, the move has meant something else more significant: Brooks is still playing in September.
“It was probably one of the toughest decisions I’ve had to make,” Brooks said. “And then I think once I did make the decision it felt like a weight off my shoulders, then I was just keen to get over and play footy, and I guess just worry about playing footy.”
Brooks’ appearance on Sunday means another will now be known as the player with the most games without a final. A throwback to the days of the NSW Rugby League and the Super League war, Cameron Blair won the Dally M rookie of the year while playing for Wests in 1988, 26 years before Brooks did the same.
The second rower went on to play 184 first grade games without a finals appearance according to a list compiled last year by rugby league historian David Middleton. Blair thinks otherwise. “It’s actually incorrect, it was actually 186 so I don’t know where I’ve lost two games somewhere,” he said with a laugh on Thursday.
Blair, now 58, is very much aware of his place in rugby league history. “Some of my close friends like to bring it up, so yes, I do.” But reflecting on his career with the Magpies, Parramatta Eels, Western Reds and Adelaide Rams, Blair said he is simply proud to have played as much as he did.
“It’s a very small, elite group NRL players are in, so anyone who plays a few first grade games, it’s wonderful. Blokes who play years and years, it’s very difficult to do. And these people who get to 300 games, well, they’re superhuman. Someone like Cameron Smith [who played 430 games], it’s mind-boggling.”
Of not getting to play in September, the 58-year-old – exactly twice the age of Brooks – is content. “It’s the way it worked out. I’m just proud of the loyalty that I went and had. Yeah sure, you’ve always got a little regret that maybe you didn’t get to the grand final. But I’ve talked to a lot of other great players, and they didn’t get there either, so it doesn’t really bother me too much.”
He said during his stints at both Wests and Parramatta he turned down offers to play with perennial contenders like Manly, St George and Canterbury, instead choosing to stay loyal to his teammates. He still lives close to one of his best friends, David Gallagher, who was a teammate at Western Suburbs.
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But Blair does wonder what might have been had things played out differently. “I had the opportunity to go several times, and chose not to through loyalty. I think Brooks, he’s probably very similar. Years ago he probably should have gone but he didn’t through loyalty. It does have a two-fold effect, being very loyal to a club: there’s always the price.”
Many aren’t aware that Blair was actually part of a match-day squad for a final. In 1991, under coach Warren Ryan, Wests beat Canterbury in the first week of the finals then lost to Canberra in the minor preliminary semi. Blair was recovering from a stress fracture in his leg that year and Ryan only used two players off his bench. The Penrith junior was part of the game day line-up but never took the field.
It was the closest he would come to a finals appearance. “It was really competitive and they kept winning games, then obviously that kept me on the sideline instead of the first 13, but I was still part of the squad,” he said.
Now working in government and living in south-western Sydney, Blair said he would enjoy the finals this weekend. Rather than focus on Brooks, the fan of Craig Bellamy was instead looking forward to watching Melbourne.
And his reclaimed place atop the list of players without a final appearance won’t prompt any angst. “It’s sort of like the old cliche: try, if you keep failing you can live with yourself, because you’ve tried your best.”
