We know that one of the great joys of watching professional sport is playing armchair doctor and speculating on the type and severity of player injuries when the occur. But you didn’t exactly need a PhD to figure out that Sam Burgess‘ face, in layman’s terms, got all fucked up during last night’s NRL Grand Final.
And look, cards on the table here, the above headline is misleading. That’s a bit irresponsible and we’re sorry. We’ve written that he played “all” the game with a broken face. To be accurate that should read “all but the first five seconds of the game.“
Suffering what was later diagnosed – at least officially by an actual Doctor – as a fractured cheekbone on literally the first tackle of the game, not only did Burgess refuse to leave the field, he also refused to cease bleeding. 80 minutes later and not only had he helped lift the South Sydney Rabbitohs to their first Premiership since 1971, but he’d somehow managed to turn in a best-on-ground performance as well; a performance dutifully rewarded with the Clive Churchill Medal.
As for today, whilst his fellow Bunnies will be celebrating a long-awaited Premiership victory, Burgess fully expects to be in hospital today with a surgeon repairing the side of his face that got more or less caved in.
“The doc seems to be thinking surgery. We’ll see how it goes, but I’d imagine I’ll be getting it fixed in the next 24 hours. I guess the joy is overriding the pain at the moment.“
As for if he knew straight away how badly he’d been injured after the tackle:
“I knew I’d broke it straight away. The side of my face just felt numb. My head was a little bit dizzy and I had a bit of blurred vision. But we just covered for each other and there were a lot of guys out there helping me through it. There was not a chance I was missing out.“
He might be a Pom and about to leave the country for Union, but if the Department of Immigration decided to issue him a passport that read “Aussie Fuckin’ Legend” on the front of it, I don’t think many people would object.
Photo: Mark Kolbe via Getty Images.
