Long before Roosters backrower Angus Crichton amputated his finger, a Newcastle Knight, desperate to get on the field, was wanting to do the same.
It was 2011 and Mark Taufua was nowhere to be seen.
What was keeping him out?
A finger injury.
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“You’re not going to believe it, I hurt my finger,” Taufua told the Our Town Our Team podcast.
The year before, Taufua was the starting prop for the Club.
But just months later, he was sitting on the shelf.
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So frustrated by the injury, the former Samoan international wanted to chop it off.
“I did my little finger in a trial and it put me out for ages,” he explained.
“I told them to cut it off. The surgeon goes; ‘No, you can’t do that mate’.
“It’s that bad. I can’t straighten it to this day.
“It’s bad. I wanted to cut it off.
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“I said, ‘will it affect the way I hold the ball?’, he said; ‘no it won’t’, so I said, ‘just cut it off.’
“I couldn’t play the first game. I remember going to the season launch and people asked why I wasn’t playing and it was the worst thing to say … I had a little finger brace on.
“I wanted to cut it off so I could play with the boys.”
While Taufua didn’t lose a finger, former Rabbit turned Rooster Crichton did.
He chopped his off his middle finger in 2017 below the middle knuckle.
“His was the middle one,” Taufua said of Crichton.
“It gets jammed up… it’s frustrating.”
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