‘I looked down and could see bone’: Munster details gruesome injury

Standing outside the Melbourne Storm dressing room, Cameron Munster nursed his right hand in his left, a bloodied tissue covering the mangled mess underneath.

Like kids with their noses pressed against the glass of an aquarium, we all wanted to inspect the damage from his first-half tackle on Parramatta captain Clint Gutherson.

The tackle looked innocuous enough, but the result was something out of a slasher film; a gruesome compound fracture and dislocation of Munster’s finger that will require surgery and likely sideline him for a couple of weeks.

“It’s a bit yucky at the moment,” he said. “You want a look?”

When Munster pulled the tissue away it revealed two fat, pink sausages where his ring and middle fingers would normally reside. The nail on the ring finger looked to be missing, but there was so much blood you couldn’t tell.

Any thoughts of a late-night Maccas run after leaving the stadium ended in that moment.

Cameron Munster is wrapped up by the Eels’ defence.Credit:Getty Images

“I’ve never seen the bone sticking out before,” Munster said. “I felt my finger go numb when I came out of the tackle with Gutho and I thought, ‘That doesn’t feel right’. I looked down and there was a bit of bone sticking out.”

What was that debate we were having in the off-season again? The one about footballers getting paid too much money?

Those who played with or against former Souths captain Sam Burgess often rate him as the toughest footballer they knew.

He once suffered a compound fracture in a finger, the injury so sickening the replacements on the bench were dry heaving. Burgess trotted to the sideline and asked for his finger to be taped up, but the medical staff convinced him to not play on.

So, when news filtered through to the press box of Munster’s injury, it was widely accepted that was his night.

Instead, he received two painkilling injections, barked at his teammates as they made their way down one of CommBank Stadium’s various tunnels for the second half, and then plotted a Storm victory.

He didn’t unfurl one of those Munster masterclasses when everything he touches is dripping in gold. He ran out of the line to gift Eels prop Junior Paulo the try that gave the home side a 12-6 lead. He threw errant passes, prompting Craig Bellamy more than once to lean back in his chair in the coach’s box and howl at the moon.

But, with 17 minutes of normal time left to play, Munster came up with a very Munster play that kept them in the match.

Young Tonumaipea runs at Junior Paulo.Credit:Getty Images

Melbourne were attacking close to the line, the play drifting to the left. The ball came to Munster, who look liked he was about to pass inside to prop Nelson Asofa-Solomona. That’s certainly where the Eels defenders were looking.

But Munster didn’t pass. He passed the ball ever-so-weirdly to himself. It was enough to throw out the Eels’ defensive line just a few inches; Munster darted left and sent centre Young Tonumaipea over in the corner.

“I tried passing it a bit more in the second half,” Munster said. “I didn’t run it as much as I wanted to. It was still sore at times, even though I had the numbing needle.”

This 16-12 victory, sealed when hooker Harry Grant reached out in a tackle in the third minute of golden point, embodied the Storm of old: tough, unyielding, not prepared to cop excuses, of which they had several.

They were decimated by injuries in the pre-season with Justin Olam, Tariq Sims, Tui Kamikamica and George Jennings all unavailable for round one. Throughout the match, Bellamy and his assistants frantically shuffled the decks as more players went down.

Winger Xavier Coates could be out for as long as Munster after leaving the field with an injury to the SC joint of his shoulder, which is better than the AC joint but nonetheless painful. For much of the first half, his arm was limp.

Despite the adversity, Melbourne still won, prompting Bellamy to make this observation: “Just being so gutsy through the whole 80 minutes … I don’t think we have been like that as a team for the past 12 months.”

It’s unfathomable that the Storm, under Bellamy’s militant and outrageously successful regime, could ever lack resolve. But they were given a reality check when Sims arrived from St George Illawarra in the off-season.

“We asked Tariq what we lacked when he got here,” Munster said. “He said, ‘A bit of aggression, a bit of mongrel’. That really opened our eyes.”

A pesky bone protruding out of his ring finger wasn’t going to stop Munster. As he wrapped his bloodied sausage fingers in his tissue, he was asked if he required surgery.

“You’re asking the wrong bloke,” he smiled. “I’m a footballer.”

And then some.

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