Mahalia Murphy. Picture: Gene Ramirez
The plagiarism is obvious but there is no better way of saying it.
It was the best of days, it was the worst of days.
Mahalia Murphy went to Brisbane for the biggest event of her young life.
The Doonside flyer was a member of the women’s Indigenous All Stars team that would play in a curtain-raiser to the indigenous men’s match against the NRL All Stars at Suncorp Stadium.
‘‘It was really good,’’ she said.
‘‘We were happy on the first day.
‘‘We visited schools in mixed groups and talked about things like health issues.’’
So the women got to mingle with the likes of Johnathan Thurston and Greg Inglis and later played on the hallowed Suncorp turf, the home of the Brisbane Broncos and State of Origin.
Now the bad, and it wasn’t the 32-16 game-day loss.
‘‘I only touched the ball twice, on the blindside,’’ said the athletics flyer and prolific tryscorer.
‘‘We were asked to train for two hours in the heat in the days before the game.
‘‘It was full contact against the NSW under-16 boys team.
‘‘By the time of the game we were all sore.
‘‘One of the forwards, Mossy, suffered a broken nose in practice but nothing was going to stop her from playing.’’
Then instead of playing the curtain-raiser to the main game in front of thousands, the women were switched for budgetary reasons to be the first game.
‘‘The gates opened at 3pm and we kicked off at 3.05pm before about 1000 people,’’ said Murphy, who spent the match without the ball and told to stay in her wing position.
‘‘I made heaps of tackles,’’ she said.
A determined Murphy said ‘‘I’m going back next year’’ and added if there were a next time she wouldn’t care about instructions: she would roam infield looking for the ball.