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Message: [QUOTE="Big Pete, post: 2736282, member: 1899"] GLENN LAZARUS Brisbane If there was a big match on in 1992, chances are Glenn Lazarus was ploughing his way upfield, driving opposition defences backwards with his forceful charges or stopping them in their tracks with a crushing tackle. And chances are, Lazarus was on the winning side. Lazarus’ season was the stuff of which dreams are made. He played the final of the Nissan Sevens, the final of the Tooheys Challenge, the City-Country match, the State of Origin series, the Ashes series, the Test against Papua New Guinea, the grand final, the World Cup final and the World Club challenge. In all but the Sevens and the Tooheys Challenge he emerged a winner. It is doubtful if any player in the history of the game has tasted so much success in the space of one season. Counting all matches, including the Sevens, Lazarus played 43 matches in 1992. He won 35 of them. He played in four losing Winfield Cup matches, the finals of the Sevens and the Tooheys Challenge, a State of Origin match for NSW and a Test against Great Britain. Ironically, Lazarus’ decision, following the 1991 season to join the Broncos caused plenty of heartache. Effectively a victim of Canberra’s salary cap excesses, Lazarus walked out on the Raiders after they had delayed making him an offer. It caused bad blood in the national capital and added to the pressure he faced in Brisbane, where he was seen as the Broncos’ “hired gun”. The expectations on the 26-year-old prop were enormous. Broncos fans believed he would be the “missing link” in their team’s grand final jigsaw. It was a long-held belief that the Broncos had a weak under-belly, and Lazarus, the man labelled the “Brick with Eyes”, would be the player to stiffen up Brisbane’s forward pack. From a team point of view, nothing less than grand final victory would have satisfied their fans or silenced their critics south of the border. Lazarus admitted that the fulltime siren in the grand final brought a great surge of relief for him and his team-mates. The form of the big prop was outstanding through the long season. Consistency for a player of his size (110kg) is often a problem. But not for Lazarus, who was running as strongly in October as he was in March. After missing a large slice of the 1991 season wiith a serious sternum injury, Lazarus never took a backward step in ’92. His representative season began in the front row of winning Country Origin combination, where he was named man of the match after the 17-10 victory. He was the tower of strength for NSW in the brutal State of Origin series woon 2-1 by the Blues, and was part of Australia’s Ashes victory against Great Britain. He retained his Test position for the one-off Test victory against Papua New Guinea and was one of the first forwards picked in Australia’s World Cup final squad in October. Born and bred in Queanbeyan, Lazarus didn’t become a front-rower until the age of 21, when the then Canberra coach Don Furner shifted him from the second row during pre-season training in 1987. A quick apprenticeship during the ’87 season had him primed for action in 1988 and he rapidly established himself in the Raiders’ front row. Midway through that season he was selected in an Australian President’s XIII which played Great Britain, and scored a try in a memorable debut at Queanbeyan’s Seiffert Oval. His confidence boosted, Lazarus played his way into New South Wales’ State of Origin side the next season and later that year was an integral member of the Raiders’ first grand final-winning side. By 1990 he was a Test player. He established himself in the Australian team during the 1990 Kangaroo tour and returned a seasoned international. The sternum injury ruled him out of the series against New Zealand in ’91, but Lazarus returned for the short tour to Papua New Guinea at the end of that season, and soon after transferred to Brisbane for a season he will never forget. [/QUOTE]

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