Themis
09-05-08, 12:34 PM
Jamie Pandaram | May 9, 2008
http://www.leaguehq.com.au/news/news/how-luke-escaped-a-life-ban-aged-11/2008/05/08/1210131165311.htmlThe
The rising Rabbitohs and Kiwis star was almost lost to the game before his career had even begun, writes Jamie Pandaram.
Issac Luke shouldn't be playing his first Test for the Kiwis tonight. He shouldn't even be playing rugby league.
The difference between a rising superstar and a wasted talent is millimetres - that is how close he came to earning a life ban for an appalling spear tackle 10 years ago. That is how close he came to paralysing a boy.
At the time, Luke was 11, playing for the Hawera Hawks in his small New Zealand home town. The opponent, who spent the rest of the season recovering in hospital from back and neck injuries, would walk again and later become his friend.
But Luke, who from a young age was already causing murmurs with his lifting-drive style of defence, could have easily been banished from the game. The boy's parents and coaches had demanded that Luke be banned from all contact sport over the incident - they had a strong case but in the end decided against taking the matter to court. That decision has given the Kiwis their newest Test player, a young man with the strength and speed to unsettle the world's best team.
There can be little excuse for picking up an opponent and spearing him head-first into the ground, and Luke offers none. "It was pretty bad, the boy ended up in hospital," he says. "I admit, it was a bad tackle, it was terrible. My grandfather was the ref and he told me off, the boy wasn't in good shape."
It's no wonder the first thing Souths coach Jason Taylor tried to do when he signed Luke two years ago was to change his tackling technique - the battle continues.
"That is the way I have always tackled," says Luke, who turns 21 this month and celebrated the birth of his second son this week.
There's another reason Luke shouldn't be playing for the Kiwis tonight - he never wanted to. This diminutive, 174-centimetre, 80-kilogram hustler stands tall in a land of giants, but had pictured his future on a different kind of field - the farm where he grew up with parents George Luke and Sharon Graham, elder brother Raymond, younger brother Jerome and sister Rebecca.
"Playing in the NRL, being successful in rugby league, it was my brother's dream and my dad's dream," Luke says. "I wanted to become a family man and work on the farm, that was what I wanted to be. I didn't think I'd get this far.
"I always loved the way my dad treated us kids, and that is something I wanted to do. I just did sports for fun. The reason I had a kid was to calm down, and become the father I always wanted to be.
I have calmed down a lot, I used to be really, really active. I always used to be out of the house, out with the boys. Now I just stay home and wait for my [elder] son to call me, I can hear him mumbling. He is only one, he can't talk, but he knows who I am. Hopefully, this other boy [Luke's newborn son] knows who I am. My boys will be my world. Just being able to watch them grow up will be unreal."
In many ways, Luke is still growing up. Yet so much will rest on his shoulders tonight, when he goes toe to toe with Australia's captain and the game's best hooker, Cam Smith. Luke will be required to pose a constant threat from dummy-half while supplying precision ball to his bullocking forwards and unfamiliar halves, and is likely do the goal-kicking - not to mention his stout defence.
A bad game and New Zealand's hopes are dust. Or maybe a bad game, and the Kiwis will blow Australia away, because Luke is a harsh marker when it comes to his own performances. In fact, one of the finds of the NRL last year describes most of his games thus far as failures.
"This year was my year to crack the NRL," he says. "I put my goals to make it in first grade this year, and it came a bit too soon. I played a bit more safe last year, this year JT wants me to be a bit more loose.
"Hopefully, this year I can show you guys what I can do. Last year, I played pretty terrible." Huh?
"I am hard on myself, only because of my old man. He brought me up not to rate yourself, to a certain extent. If you think you had a shit game, you had a shit game.
"Most of my ratings last year were probably four out of 10. I dropped ball - that will kill you, missed tackles, even a bad pass."
Luke, a willing conversationalist with a fresh honesty about him, said in a text message sent on Wednesday night: "Ya know I've been told so many times about my height and weight that people have been continually trying to put me off the game of league.
"But that just gives me an excuse to try harder but to also prove to others that I can do it, and others can, too."
http://www.leaguehq.com.au/news/news/how-luke-escaped-a-life-ban-aged-11/2008/05/08/1210131165311.htmlThe
The rising Rabbitohs and Kiwis star was almost lost to the game before his career had even begun, writes Jamie Pandaram.
Issac Luke shouldn't be playing his first Test for the Kiwis tonight. He shouldn't even be playing rugby league.
The difference between a rising superstar and a wasted talent is millimetres - that is how close he came to earning a life ban for an appalling spear tackle 10 years ago. That is how close he came to paralysing a boy.
At the time, Luke was 11, playing for the Hawera Hawks in his small New Zealand home town. The opponent, who spent the rest of the season recovering in hospital from back and neck injuries, would walk again and later become his friend.
But Luke, who from a young age was already causing murmurs with his lifting-drive style of defence, could have easily been banished from the game. The boy's parents and coaches had demanded that Luke be banned from all contact sport over the incident - they had a strong case but in the end decided against taking the matter to court. That decision has given the Kiwis their newest Test player, a young man with the strength and speed to unsettle the world's best team.
There can be little excuse for picking up an opponent and spearing him head-first into the ground, and Luke offers none. "It was pretty bad, the boy ended up in hospital," he says. "I admit, it was a bad tackle, it was terrible. My grandfather was the ref and he told me off, the boy wasn't in good shape."
It's no wonder the first thing Souths coach Jason Taylor tried to do when he signed Luke two years ago was to change his tackling technique - the battle continues.
"That is the way I have always tackled," says Luke, who turns 21 this month and celebrated the birth of his second son this week.
There's another reason Luke shouldn't be playing for the Kiwis tonight - he never wanted to. This diminutive, 174-centimetre, 80-kilogram hustler stands tall in a land of giants, but had pictured his future on a different kind of field - the farm where he grew up with parents George Luke and Sharon Graham, elder brother Raymond, younger brother Jerome and sister Rebecca.
"Playing in the NRL, being successful in rugby league, it was my brother's dream and my dad's dream," Luke says. "I wanted to become a family man and work on the farm, that was what I wanted to be. I didn't think I'd get this far.
"I always loved the way my dad treated us kids, and that is something I wanted to do. I just did sports for fun. The reason I had a kid was to calm down, and become the father I always wanted to be.
I have calmed down a lot, I used to be really, really active. I always used to be out of the house, out with the boys. Now I just stay home and wait for my [elder] son to call me, I can hear him mumbling. He is only one, he can't talk, but he knows who I am. Hopefully, this other boy [Luke's newborn son] knows who I am. My boys will be my world. Just being able to watch them grow up will be unreal."
In many ways, Luke is still growing up. Yet so much will rest on his shoulders tonight, when he goes toe to toe with Australia's captain and the game's best hooker, Cam Smith. Luke will be required to pose a constant threat from dummy-half while supplying precision ball to his bullocking forwards and unfamiliar halves, and is likely do the goal-kicking - not to mention his stout defence.
A bad game and New Zealand's hopes are dust. Or maybe a bad game, and the Kiwis will blow Australia away, because Luke is a harsh marker when it comes to his own performances. In fact, one of the finds of the NRL last year describes most of his games thus far as failures.
"This year was my year to crack the NRL," he says. "I put my goals to make it in first grade this year, and it came a bit too soon. I played a bit more safe last year, this year JT wants me to be a bit more loose.
"Hopefully, this year I can show you guys what I can do. Last year, I played pretty terrible." Huh?
"I am hard on myself, only because of my old man. He brought me up not to rate yourself, to a certain extent. If you think you had a shit game, you had a shit game.
"Most of my ratings last year were probably four out of 10. I dropped ball - that will kill you, missed tackles, even a bad pass."
Luke, a willing conversationalist with a fresh honesty about him, said in a text message sent on Wednesday night: "Ya know I've been told so many times about my height and weight that people have been continually trying to put me off the game of league.
"But that just gives me an excuse to try harder but to also prove to others that I can do it, and others can, too."