Kalyn Ponga played for 20 minutes with a suspected broken arm that may now render his race to be fit for the World Cup final a narrative almost as magnetic as his epic and unforgettable duel with Reece Walsh.<\/p>\n
In his first match for New Zealand since eligibility rules allowed it, the Newcastle fullback engaged in one of team sport\u2019s most outlandish individual shootouts, scoring two tries to the one of Australia\u2019s Walsh – who also pulled off a try-saving tackle on his opposite number in the tournament opening 24-22 win by the green and golds.<\/p>\n
Ponga\u2019s arrival in international rugby league was every bit as mesmeric as that of Walsh at Wembley last year – so much so that his coach Stacey Jones and captain James Fisher-Harris struggled to get past their awe of him even as they pondered being without him.<\/p>\n
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Kalyn Ponga 2nd Try<\/p>\n
\u201cKalyn, we\u2019re not too sure yet – it\u2019s a possible fracture of the arm,\u201d said Jones, who characterised his own reaction to his custodian’s display as \u201cwhat a freak!\u201d<\/p>\n
‘\u201cHe\u2019s going to go for scans and we\u2019re not going to make any call right now on where he\u2019s at – but he had a pretty good game.\u201d<\/p>\n
The 28-year-old Ponga appeared to injure his left forearm when it accidentally made contact with an opponent\u2019s head in the 51st minute of the Allianz Stadium epic, watched by the biggest Sydney Test crowd in more than half a century.<\/p>\n
That was five minutes after his try which broke a 10-10 halftime deficit.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it was 20 minutes he carried on, he toughed it out and \u2026 yeah \u2026 tough one,” said Jones.<\/p>\n
In fact, before Ponga was replaced in the 70th minute, he managed another try when he pulled the Australian defence\u2019s pants down before running the final 20 metres with his own shorts at half mast.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think he even palmed them off with his bad arm,\u201d remarked the man who replaced him, Keano Kini.<\/p>\n
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Kalyn Ponga Try<\/p>\n
In the Kiwis rooms, those of the periphery of the team were saying that Cronulla and Australia rake Blayke Brailey returned to active duty just three weeks after suffering a broken arm in Origin I. Even if the arm is broken, he’ll be fit by November 15, they said.<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had scored a try and that\u2019s when we were told what it possibly was and that he had to come off,\u201d said Jones. \u201cHe couldn\u2019t catch a ball or anything like that.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe was in a bit of discomfort \u2026 a lot of discomfort.\u201d<\/p>\n
Captain James Fisher-Harris remarked: \u201cHe\u2019s a tough bugger, eh? He\u2019s obviously got a lot of pride in the black and white jersey. He didn\u2019t want to let his team-mates down.<\/p>\n
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A Haka heard around the world<\/p>\n
\u201cLike Stacey said, I thought he did an outstanding job. He\u2019s just a freakish player but he\u2019s also one of those tough players.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m feeling for him now but hopefully he\u2019s OK, it\u2019s not too bad.\u201d<\/p>\n
There was no ambulance or hospital for the Knights grand final star. He changed at the same time as his team-mates before joining family, telling reporters when approached for a comment more than an hour after fulltime: \u201cNot right now.\u201d<\/p>\n
Jones added: \u201cHe\u2019s OK. He\u2019s upbeat. He like \u2018we\u2019ll get the scans done, we\u2019ll see where it goes to from there\u2019. He\u2019s obviously disappointed but there\u2019s a bit of upbeat about him too. He really wants to still be involved.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat a freak! Again, what he did for Newcastle and how he played his footy for the last month. To come into this team and play off the back of these guys\u2026.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe dominated so many areas of that game and he was a beneficiary from that. Playing behind this forward pack, he felt real comfortable.”<\/p>\n
Jones said a shoulder injury to try scoring centre Casey McLean was not serious.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Kalyn Ponga played for 20 minutes with a suspected broken arm that may now render his race to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":929254,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-929253","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\/929253","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=929253"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/929253\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/929254"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=929253"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=929253"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=929253"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}