Thousands of fans have stormed onto the field at Allianz Stadium to celebrate South Sydney veteran Alex Johnston breaking the NRL’s try-scoring record.<\/p>\n
The winger entered the history books when a break down the left edge put him over for his 213th career try, and his second in Friday’s clash with bitter rivals Sydney Roosters.<\/p>\n
Johnston had earlier grabbed a Latrell Mitchell flick pass to score his first try of the night and equal Ken Irvine’s mark of 212, which the legendary winger set in 1973.<\/p>\n
Security presence was increased for the round-two clash after Souths players and coach Wayne Bennett had this week urged supporters not to invade the pitch.<\/p>\n
Alex Johnston of the Rabbitohs leaves the field after scoring the most try’s in the NRL\u00a0Cameron Spencer\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
But fans were undeterred by the prospect of $5,500 fines, having booed earlier in the game when the big screen displayed warnings against entering the field.<\/p>\n
The majority took around five minutes to return to the stands as the ground announcer reminded the crowd that “we have a game of rugby league to play”.<\/p>\n
Prime Minister and devoted Souths fan Anthony Albanese was among those on the field celebrating rugby league history being made.<\/p>\n
View this post on Instagram A post shared by NRL (@nrl)<\/p>\n
Players took refuge in the dressing sheds amid the chaos as a handful of the more sluggish supporters were detained by security and police.<\/p>\n
Johnston applauded and waved to the crowd as the teams returned to the pitch, with the Rabbitohs receiving a warmer reception than their hosts.<\/p>\n
Play resumed roughly 15 minutes after Johnston’s try helped Souths level the scores at 12-12 and sparked the momentous scenes in the northern in-goal.<\/p>\n
In commentary for Fox Sports, NRL legend Cooper Cronk called Johnston’s feat “the greatest moment in our game’s history for a long period of time”.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Thousands of fans have stormed onto the field at Allianz Stadium to celebrate South Sydney veteran Alex Johnston…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":537664,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-537663","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537663","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=537663"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/537663\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/537664"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=537663"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=537663"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=537663"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}