Storm superstar Ryan Papenhuyzen enjoyed a sensational return in an on Friday night, which included a match-saving tackle at the death. But Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy has revealed he didn’t even want his gun fullback playing in the top-four clash. Papenhuyzen hadn’t played since fracturing his ankle seven weeks ago, but the 26-year-old showed no cobwebs.
In one of the final plays of the games, with Melbourne clinging on to a 30-24 lead, Dolphins fullback Trai Fuller hit Jamayne Isaako with a beautiful cut-out ball and the winger looked destined to score and send the game into golden point. But Papenhuyzen had other ideas. Despite Fuller’s deception wrong-footing the Storm fullback, he was able to recover in time to sprint to the corner and help deny Isaako.
“To be quite honest, I wasn’t all that keen to play him in the NRL straight away, I wanted him to have a game in Queensland Cup,” Bellamy said. “But I’ve never seen him so confident to come back after an injury, he was pretty firm that he was ready to play NRL. So when your senior players and key players have got that sort of attitude, well.
“I was sort of hoping with 10-15 to go if we were in a good position we could give him a rest but because of the closeness of the game we never thought of taking him off. “He was just so confident about being able to come back and play well and do his job. And there have been times in the past when he’s come back and probably hasn’t shown that kind of confide.
