Tigers fans shouldn’t be booing Lachie Galvin. They should be cheering

The last bastion of blame-free booing is for the club traitor. Some booing from crowds is prejudiced, misdirected, boorish or simply unfair, but on Saturday, 12 months to the day since Lachlan Galvin left Wests Tigers, he copped it.

Loud booing filled Parramatta Stadium every time he touched the ball for the Bulldogs. Given his high level of involvement in the match, the question was whether Tigers fans could maintain their rage. Eighty minutes is a long time, considering the 83 times Galvin touched the ball.

His crime? All he’d done was break his contract and walk out on the struggling club that had given him his chance, mid-season, to scarper to a high-placed team where he thought he might win a premiership.

Yes, he’s very young and probably prone to all sorts of seductions and influences, and he tries his guts out every week to make it right, but even if you feel sorry for him, there’s a special place in rugby league hell for the deserter.

What is a little odd, given the Tigers’ and Bulldogs’ trajectories since Galvin’s move, is that Tigers fans would be angry. Shouldn’t they be happy?

Again on Saturday, Galvin was busy and ambitious, but repeatedly, when the crunch came, not quite good enough. The lesson from these 12 months is that Galvin isn’t the player he was thought to be, or not yet anyway, maybe never was or will be, and none of that is his fault.

His arrival upset the good thing the Bulldogs had going until last June; if anyone should be booing, it might be them.

The booing on Saturday did fall silent, late in an entertaining game, when the Bulldogs attacked and the Tigers’ fans couldn’t boo because their mouths had their hearts in them. But Galvin and the Dogs fluffed their last-tackle options again. The Tigers’ supporters ought to have been quietly gloating, but that doesn’t make much of a noise.

Over-praised and over-pressured, Galvin and his dramas diverted focus from how the NRL is producing some genuine wunderkind playmakers in their early twenties.

Isaiya Katoa (Dolphins), Ethan Strange (Canberra), Joey Walsh (Manly) and Liam Sutton (Cowboys) are among the rising tide of young playmakers, not to mention Sam Walker (Roosters), at the top of the game and still only 23.

Strange’s performances in Origin I and for the Raiders on Sunday confirm what he’s shown during the past year: he’s not a potential star, he’s already there. NSW coach Laurie Daley will probably do the stodgy thing for Origin II, reinstating Mitchell Moses and playing Strange off the bench. He’ll do so at his peril.

Incredible as the Dragons’ win was over Brisba