BY STAFF WRITERS

Ladies and gentlemen, boys and girls. Welcome to the greatest show on earth! Come inside our museum of misfits, the weird, the stranger still and the downright crazy.

Check out our Team of the Little Bit Weird:

1 Puig Aubert
Considered the greatest French rugby league player of all time. That isn’t weird. What takes the cake for us is the fact that Aubert smoked cigarettes on-field!

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=huQ7K2C0uUw

2 Ian Herron
Remember ‘Chook’ Herron’s kicking style? After placing the ball, he’d go back and turn his body completely the other way and twist his head back like The Exorcist. How’s the neck, Ian?

 
3 Graeme Bradley
You can’t have a freak show without a penguin. In our opinion, ‘The Penguin’ was the most awkward looking centre to play the game. Shuffling across the ground like a … penguin, Bradley played in almost 200 first grade games.

 
4 Lachlan Maranta
Here is Alex Glenn speaking to NRL.com: “It would be Lachlan Maranta. He always has to tip his drink over in front of him before we go out to play. He then sprays his sticky spray on his hands and high fives Jack Reed. I don’t know why but it has to be done. He also goes up to a wall and stands very close to it, about 10 centimetres, and just stares at the wall. I don’t know if he’s praying but I always see him just standing and staring at the wall.”

 
5 Adam MacDougall
You don’t get much weirder or crazier than ‘Mad Dog’ MacDougall. Apparently MacDougall would talk to his thighs before games to fire them up, shoulder charge walls and eat thousands of raw eggs during the season. That’ll do us.

 
6 Jason Nightingale
The happy haka – enough said.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Aoh-WmJXgAU

 
7 Cooper Cronk
Arguably the oddest cat in our team. For years Cronk had his own website full of his own quotes. Here he is describing a field goal he kicked in State of Origin: “Every sinew in my body came together in one perfect whole”. Ummm?

 
8 Hitro Okesene
Remember this nutty Māori prop at the Auckland Warriors in the mid 1990’s? With his mullet waving in the wind, Okesene made a career out of his bullocking charges. Only problem was his running style which saw him tuck his head down and into the defensive line whilst running at a million miles an hour. May have the same neck issues as Ian Herron.

9 Mark Riddell
We’re still not sure his technique made any difference to his goal kicking.

 
10 Mark O’Meley
A penguin, a chook and now an ogre. Story goes O’Meley used to rub a tube of Deep Heat into his bald head before games to fire himself up. That is nuts!

11 John Hopoate
Captain/Coach perhaps? Big Hoppa spent most of his career punching, sledging and pointing the finger.

 
12 Adrian Morley
We dare you to look into this man’s eyes and tell us you’re not scared. Morley made mincemeat out of opposition NRL forwards for years and was must-watch because of the fact he could lose the plot at any moment and knock someone’s head clean of their shoulders.

 
13 Martin Lang
Remember the cannonball guy from those old freak shows? Martin Lang was rugby league’s equivalent. Lang was the punching bag that kept on giving.