FAIRYTALE ENDING IS MISSING AS RAIDERS MAKE EXIT
HOW did David Bishop feel after he ventured into rugby league for the first time?
“Targeted?” the one-cap union maverick once said.
“I felt like I was a dartboard! I got battered, I really did.
“My first game against Salford I tore all the ligaments in my ankle, broke my nose and three teeth.”
It took time for the situation to improve.
“I got bashed about,” said Bishop. “I broke my rib, broke my ankle a couple of times, I did my hernia.
“There were a lot of punch-ups. It was a different game back then, a tough game. Someone could have taken your head clean off and wouldn’t even get 10 minutes.” Different times, indeed.
If Gavin Henson was nervous once his rugby league debut started, he made a decent fist of concealing it.
He was figuring for West Wales Raiders at an immaculate Stebonheath Park in Llanelli in a Challenge Cup tie against Championship side Widnes Vikings, once the team of Jonathan Davies, Paul Moriarty and John Devereux.
It was a brutally challenging assignment for the Welsh side, described elsewhere as perennial League One whipping boys who had picked up just one win in two seasons.
They had a go, with Henson having the odd interesting moment, too.
But, ultimately, the cow did not jump over the moon, Jack did not chop down the beanstalk, Cinderella didn’t get to go to the ball. There was to be no fairy story, with Widnes winning 58-4.
Henson will learn. At times, he looked what he was, a 15-a-side player playing 13-a-side. He attempted the odd pass out of the tackle, the ball once going loose. But there was also some good stuff to be encouraged by, not least his willingness to play on the line.
Just 55 seconds had passed when the former Wales union man effortlessly swung his right boot to pitch the ball towards the corner. It was one of those “I’ve got all day” kicks he used to come up with in his early days with Swansea RFC.
By the third minute, the man wearing No. 6 for the Raiders was directing operations behind the scrum.
A couple of nice passes, first off his right hand and then off his left, followed before Henson took the ball to the line and provided an important link in a move which ended with his team-mate Uria Naulusala crossing in the corner.
It was 4-0 to the Raiders and those who deal in clichés might have been tempted to suggest they were in dreamland.
Reality didn’t take long to intervene, however.
After play resumed following a lengthy delay for an injury to Widnes’s Calum O’Neill, the visitors seized the initiative with their first try.
Then Raiders had their numbers reduced after a spear tackle from Jamie Murphy saw him red-carded.
There was to be no way back.
By the 30th minute, the co-commentator on the BBC’s online production was talking of a “breezy walk under the posts” as Widnes claimed their fourth touchdown..
Henson did what he could to tighten the Welsh team’s rearguard, hauling down a Widnes ball-carrier.
He may have worn silver boots in his pomp and had a penchant for idiosyncratic hair styling, but all who played alongside him in union will testify that the Wales defence captain from the 2008 Grand Slam side is a tough customer capable of marrying substance with style.
There was only so much the 39-year-old could do here, though.
After the sixth Widnes try, the BBC’s co-commentator was suggesting: “Gavin needs to take the helm a bit and lead this side going forward.”
It seemed something of an ask for a player who was playing his first game in the sport, but there you are: expectations go with the name.
His best chance of a try came on 46 minutes when he ran a sharp angle, only for the ball to bounce out of the breadbasket barely a metre or two from the opposition line.
Despite being a man down for more than an hour, the Raiders never gave up and former union man Morgan Allen had an excellent game, physical in both attack and defence.
But their energy levels predictably waned as the opposition took advantage of the Welsh team’s depleted numbers.
Widnes took their try tally to 11, with the final whistle sounding soon after the final one of those scores.
Henson went through the postmatch fist-bumps with team-mates and opponents.
There was no sign of any broken nose or smashed teeth on his debut.
In that sense, he had it a lot easier than Bishop all those years ago.
But he’s on a serious learning curve, and things should get better for him and his team.
It won’t all be as hard as this. His league debut came more than two years after his last competitive rugby appearance, when he featured for the Dragons against Edinburgh on February 15, 2019.