Zachary Hardaker has been selected on the bench for the Penrith Panthers in their match against the Wests Tigers, with the likelihood that he will come on at left centre to allow starting left centre, utilityTyrone Peachey, to move into the halves or forwards. His presence, after just stepping off the plane from Brexit Britain on Monday night, has attracted a lot of attention from Anglophile segments of the Australian media. Fox Sports cameramen have lost no opportunity to film Zachary Hardaker exercising on the stationary bike on the sideline.

At half time the Penrith Panthers were losing 14-22 to a speedy Wests Tigers team. Zachary if he comes on as left centre in the second half, will have to mark the mercurial and speedy Kevin Naiqama, and also keep his eye on the dynamic and sensational Wests full back James Tedesco. Zachary cannot afford to make a mistake against such speedy and elusive opponents.

In the first three minutes of the second half James Tedesco has sliced through and set up his winger to score on the Penrith right side. Wests Tigers 28-Penrith 14. The Penrith coach must soon surely want to introduce Hardaker into a failing Penrith backline.

In the 51st minute Zachary Hardaker was introduced into the game.

Hardaker has two touches of the ball in the 57th minute.

In the 67th minute Penrith attacks the Wests line, the ball goes out to Hardaker, and he tries to crash through the Wests defence to score But right on the try line, in a two man tackle, he loses the ball in the tackle as he is falling, and fails to touch down.

What happened next?

Wests Tigers were ahead 34-14 at that time. Hardaker got another touch of the ball but was unable to penetrate the defence. Penrith scores in the 73rd minute. Now Wests Tigers lead 34-20

Hardaker serves a pass to Mansour who makes ground.

Penrith scores again in the 77th minute. Wests lead 34-26

Full time Penrith defeated 34-26. Hardaker's one big scoring play is unsuccessful. But I expect he will be given another chance.

Commentators were emphasizing that Hardaker was last year's Man of Steel and that he comes from Featherstone in Yorkshire.

One thing that struck me was that Hardaker had more body tattoos than any other player, especially on his legs. His pale complexion made them even more noticeable.

Thought he was from pontefract ?

The Australian commentators, one of whom was a former London Broncos player named Joel Caine, insisted that Zachary Hardaker was from Featherstone.

Featherstone Lions was Hardaker's junior club. His first senior club was Featherstone Rovers. That is probably the reason why Joel Caine was mistaken. But afficionados of rugby league in the UK know that Hardaker was indeed born in Pontefract.

To be fair he went looking for work and got stuck in defensively. Although they lost Penrith have a very impressive young side

New depths of tedium have just been achieved.