‘Just an incredible human’: skipper’s tribute to Reece
Ian Chadband |
He wasn’t the player of the match. That was Harry Grant. Not even the player of the series. That would be Cameron Munster.
Yet it couldn’t have felt more fitting than for this first England-Australia series in a generation to be given its final searing exclamation mark by rugby league’s next gen superstar himself.
Yes, this had been Reece Walsh’s Ashes.
And he ended them just as he’d started it. From his swan-diving lift off to the series at Wembley, to his soft-shoe shuffle taking out two defenders to score at the death at Headingley and seal Australia’s 30-8 win.
And over the three weeks, in between all those four tries, that electric running and sterling defence, came the rest of the irrepressible Walsh show – a young pied piper going above and beyond to enchant a new international fan club off the pitch too.
For it’s a toss up whether the image of these reborn Ashes was the 23-year-old flying through the air to score that Wembley belter — or his autograph-signing session at pitchside afterwards while in his undies.
By Saturday night, even his Kangaroos captain appeared to have fallen head over heels for the lad – and not just as a player.
“It’s certainly a pleasure to play with him,” said Isaah Yeo. “But, first and foremost, getting to know him, he’s just an incredible human.
“A great father, he’s always on the FaceTime to his daughter back home. He just cares. So I think that’s a fair rap for a person.
“I just think he’s really authentic. In behind the scenes, he’s someone who really cares about the group, and I just think he does that really well.”
Then there’s X-factor playing ability. Walsh had had, for him, a quiet night until he popped up twice in the final 12 minutes to put the series to bed.
First, he cashed in on a bit of good fortune when a pass that could have been intercepted ended up rebounding into his predatory path.
Then, one shimmy, two shimmies and he left Kai Pearce-Paul and Alex Walmsley for dead for the cake-icer. “The rock star of rugby league!” boomed the man from the BBC.
“Just the things he can do in a game, that bit of X-factor and class, there’s not many really that have that,” said Yeo. “You need those kind of players in the game, and you just want him to be himself.”
Even man-of-the-series Munster recognised the true star-of-the-series. “He’s a special talent, mate. I’m not going to sugarcoat it,” he told AAP.
“He never goes away from his footy, always electrical, exciting. You want to have him in your team. He had an up-and-down game but he pretty much won the game for us tonight at the end with those two tries.”
Walsh himself still sounded enraptured by the whole experience.
“A dream,” he called it all, and after his grand final tour de force and his Ashes heroics, the good tidings for his new UK fan club – but not so good tidings for Super League champs Hull KR – is that he’s looking forward to returning in Broncos’ guise in February to make a glorious hat-trick in the World Club Challenge.
And the great thing about Walsh is that he can clearly be forgiven anything.
“He broke my heart in the grand final,” Storm schemer Munster reflected misty-eyed. “But he won my heart back tonight!”
AAP
