FIFITA TOYING WITH ORIGIN RETURN
ANDREW Fifita’s said it as a joke, but you wouldn’t blame Brad Fittler if he wanted to take the big Cronulla prop up on his offer.
After choosing to play for Tonga over NSW this year, the stand-in Sharks captain was asked last night if he would reconsider following his phenomenal 80-minute effort in the 24-16 comeback win over Canberra.
“If they let me play (games) one and three,” 28year-old Fifita joked.
With Tonga’s Pacific Test on the same weekend as State of Origin II in Sydney, Fifita won’t be pulling on a Blue jumper this year. But ain’t that a shame. Because if there is a better player in the NRL right now, you tell us who he is.
The three Dally M points Fifita collected for his manof-the-match effort yesterday took him to the top of the count on 16 ahead of Newcastle’s whiz kid Kalyn Ponga.
And as far as modern-day performances from frontrowers go, this was up with the very best we have seen.
From the opening whistle until the final siren he ran, tackled, ran, and tackled some more. All up he charged for 133m and banked an unbelievable 51 tackles.
“I was sending some messages down in the last five and 10 minutes, ‘Look, don’t carry the ball. Just tackle’,” Shane Flanagan smiled. “He didn’t seem to get it. “It was a huge effort. I don’t want him to play 80 minutes. That is not part of our plan.
“But it is just we are low on troops at the moment and I needed one of the frontrowers to play big minutes and he has done a great job for the team.”