‘The whole point of the game is to beat people up. Oh, and score more points’

Like many people, I weep for this great game we call rugby league.

I miss so many things. I miss the chip-and-chase, and cardboard corner posts, and Kevin Hardwicks wild mane reined in by electrical tape.

I miss the biff and the shoulder charge. Next, youll be telling me theyre banning the head butt …

Whats that? It has been banned? I weep for this game.

The person I miss most, though, is the Enforcer. God, I loved a good enforcer: David “Cement” Gillespie; Gorden “Raging Bull” Tallis; Trevor “The Axe” Gillmeister, especially in Origin including that time when he was smashed in a tackle, prompting Ray “Rabbits” Warren to declare: “Ohhhh! The Axe just got axed!”

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“Trevor Gillmeister was the best Ive seen,” offers Dragons Paul McGregor when you raise the topic of enforcers. “Him and Peter Ryan at the Broncos. Weve got a few players here who are the same. They are just power athletes: when they hit players, they stay hit. I think Jack de Belin has the best timing out of all of them."

NSW coach Brad Fittler offers this: “Theres aggression and then theres frustrated aggression. If you can be an enforcer and not get penalised, thats valuable in the modern game. And the player who has that is Tariq Sims.”

Im sitting with Sims in the stands at WIN Stadium in Wollongong ahead of the Dragons showdown with Melbourne at Jubilee Oval at Kogarah on Sunday.

Theres a lot to like about the Dragons early season form but the re-emergence of Sims as a genuine contender to make his debut for NSW is perhaps the most pleasing.

Along with de Belin, he's been bringing a nostalgic tear to the eye of retired enforcers all around the country, maybe even the world.

Take the Anzac Day win over the Roosters in which he repeatedly raced up and belted halfback Cooper Cronk, as well as running over the top of him on the way to the try line.

“It just happened to be Cooper a few times,” Sims says. “It was my job to apply a bit of legal pressure to him.”

Hes been applying a lot of “legal pressure” this season. And not just to the little fellas. Ask Titans centre Konrad Hurrell, who dared to spar with Sims in round two.

After Sims pushed Hurrell into the advertising board behind the dead-ball line, the two had to be separated. They stared down each other with Tony Soprano-like intent.

Soon after, Sims hit the 108-kilogram Hurrell with everything he had, jolting the ball loose. Then he did it again late in the game, jolting the ball loose.

“Unfortunately for Konrad, I got a few lucky hits on him,” Sims says. Lucky?

At full-time, the pair embraced and laughed. Beautiful stuff.

“Sometimes, some players can take it too personally,” Sims says. “It might be because you dislike the bloke. I think that makes for even better viewing. I like it as a footy fan myself. As soon as you cross that white line, the whole point of the game is to beat them up. Oh, and score more points than them. If that means you have to pick a personal battle, or you line up against someone who is not going to take a backward step, its one of those things where, as a physical player, you lick your lips and look forward to 80 minutes of going at it. I dont hate anyone but sometimes that's just the way it goes.”

Sometimes, I wonder if the sole purpose of YouTube is to keep a catalogue of bone-rattling, unsettle-the-dust-on-the-rafters-of-the-grandstand rugby league tackles.

On YouTube you will find Sims tackle from 2011 on Braith Anasta, who was playing for the Roosters. Sims was in his first season of first grade for the Cowboys.

Anasta is rushing towards the try line. Sims is on that line, standing his ground. He doesnt just stop the try — he snaps Anasta in half.

“Yeah, I remember it,” Sims smiles. “I was wearing number 16. I was three or four games into my first-grade career. I mean, it was Braith Anasta. He was awesome. They were awesome then. They did a short-side raid. To be honest, I only had eyes for him. If he passed, I wouldve looked pretty silly. I was lucky enough to get him up and hold him up and get the turnover.”

Yeah, just another one of those lucky tackles.

Sims seemingly had the game at his feet back then. Born and bred in Gerringong on the NSW south coast, he followed his brother Ashton to the Broncos, was named the 2010 under-20s player of the year and was duly snapped up by the Cowboys.

He was pencilled in as a NSW player of the future. And then, in round 25 against Cronulla, he snapped his left leg in two places. And then, the following season against Penrith and just seven matches into his comeback, he snapped his left leg again, in exactly the same place.

He shows you his leg. There are no gruesome scars to highlight the traumatic experience of breaking it twice. But, as he explains, theres a lot going on beneath the skin.

“They cut me open there,” he says, "before dislocating my knee cap and then driving a titanium rod all the way through the leg.”

Lovely.

“Then they put in two pins: one halfway through the bone, then one all the way through the bone.”

Awesome.

“Then theres like an exhaust hole. When they put the rod through, they have to push the bone marrow out because it cant be in your system because it can kill you. Then they screwed it off: two cross screws at the top and then two at the bottom.”

Someone once dubbed it “Terminator leg” in reference to the Schwarzenegger movies. He says he doesnt like the comparison. Hes not a T-800 cyborg by any means. The area where he broke it still hurts and throbs. Right now, there's a lump the size of a cricket ball because of a cork.

“Theres a lot of calcified bone there,” he says.

The injuries couldve prevented Sims from being the enforcer he was born to be.

“At the start, I was very hesitant to look for metres after contact,” he says. “I was running into the line and just stopping and trying to find the ground. I found out very quickly that you cant play football like that. You cant help your team if youre scared to run the ball and get injured. If youre thinking about getting injured, you will get injured.

“Im proud, mate. Im proud. Through those injuries I faced a lot of adversity, I had some big highs and lows. As a 21-year-old, I was running off Johnathan Thurston and in one night I snapped my leg. The teams travelling to Sydney to play finals footy for the first time in many years and I was laid up in bed with a cast on my leg.”

Now look at him. He's thriving.

Sims took a pay cut to join the Dragons after two-and-a-half years of losing at the Knights. He and his young family have never been happier because they are closer to home and family.

During the pre-season, when Joel Thompson was released to Manly, he walked into McGregors office.

“I want to own that left edge,” he told McGregor, who gave him the keys to the left edge.

And Sims is much closer to NSW selection than people — including himself — might realise.

Fittlers got all of us fooled. Hes been tossing up so many potential selections that theyll need to book two hotels for the first match against Queensland at the MCG on June 6.

He wont bite when asked if Sims is on the verge of selection, only pointing to his recent commentary of Dragons matches in his sideline caller's role at Channel Nine. On that score, Sims must be in the side.

Asked during the Anzac Day match how he would handle Dragons halfback Ben Hunt if he was selected for Queensland, Fittler said: “Well just sick Sims onto him”.

Fittler wears many hats. In 2010, he made a documentary for which he interviewed a variety of people across the game. As the NRL's brightest new talent, as an Origin player of the future, Sims was one of them.

Finally, eight years later, it looks like it's about to happen.

"Ive made no secret about that," Sims says. "I want to be in it."

If he is, the game's new enforcer will be entitled to shed a few tears.

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Chief Sports Writer, The Sydney Morning Herald

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