Leeds Rhinos’ Rhyse Martin’s funny response to goal kicking record as he gets stick from teammate

Last night, Rhyse Martin made history.

With the pressure on, Martin kicked a goal from the touchline to level matters in a brilliant game between his side Papua New Guinea and opponents Tonga, who are one of the tournament favourites.

The kick was on the left hand touchline and gave PNG the chance to level the game at 18-all and Martin stepped up and nailed the difficult conversion.

Sadly, it would ultimately matter little as Tonga scored a winning try in the dying minutes but the conversion will always have a place in history due to the fact it saw Martin equal the world record for most consecutive successful attempts at goal without missing at 41 equalling Liam Finn’s and Jamie Ellis’ record.

Martin will have the chance to break the record against Cook Islands next week.

After the game, Martin spoke about the achievement but was more interested in the performance of his side: “Yeah it’s a great personal achievement. For me, that’s my job really for my team. To get 41 is a great achievement, I’ll probably reflect on that later on. Disappointed with the result but couldn’t be prouder of my teammates.”

He did however go further into detail about joking about how he lost count of how many it had been since he last missed in July against Castleford: “I kind of lost count a little bit, I couldn’t remember how many I had kicked. I did have it in my mind, it’s just my job. Whether I miss or not, I just need to get that goal kick in. I just stick to my routine, that’s how I practice it and try not let the pressure get overwhelming because that’s when you tend to shank them.”

As he said this, teammate Alex Johnston joked: “It’s a good job they don’t count training.”

Even more hilarious was the fact Martin was somewhat a little relieved that Rodrick Tai’s try in the right corner was disallowed prior to this.

It would have created the same scenario but the right edge turf was a lot more softer under foot and would have made it more difficult for the Leeds man who described it using a word perhaps we should refrain from using here: “It was more the disallowed try I was worried about down the other touch line because it was pretty soft. I was a bit worried about that one but it got disallowed.”

It is rare to see a player glad to see their team’s try disallowed, Martin himself wouldn’t quite go that far especially as he noted his frustrations about the decisions that went against them after the game:

“The scrum decision before halftime where we could have taken the two points, I don’t know why the penalty went against us there.

“I think it was three disallowed tries as well. If we get those we have the lead and it’s a totally different ball game.”