Storm wrecking ball Nelson Asofa-Solomona says all the chat about him being a dirty player is just “white noise” but admits teammates have told him he needs to be careful with the finals just a few weeks away.
The man mountain is one of the most misunderstood players in the NRL.
Off the field, he’s a gentle giant, but when he crosses the white line, he becomes the most destructive enforcer in all of rugby league.
For the most part, that aggression is perfectly controlled. But when you’re 200cm and 115kg, things can go wrong, and it’s why he’s flirted with suspension several times this year.
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Asofa-Solomona was fined for a high shot on Parramatta’s Makahesi Makatoa that the NRL later granted should’ve earnedt a suspension, and he received another fine for collecting Jordan Rapana high last month.
But an incident across the ditch caused the most outrage when Asofa-Solomona wasn’t charged for a stray elbow that cracked some of Wayde Egan’s teeth.
It led some people to say the Storm players were a protected species from the match review committee and their star forward was a dirty player.
“It’s all white noise,” Asofa-Solomona told the NCA NewsWire.
“I just focus on my job. It’s not up to me to hand out the consequences. I just focus on my job. I’m a simple man and I control what I can control.”
The 26-year-old says any foul play this year has been purely accidental, but he knows he walks a fine line, which has prompted some of his teammates to tell him to curb his enthusiasm in defense.
“They told me to be careful because I’m such a large person,” he said.
“Sometimes it’s hard because things happen so quickly and accidents happen all the time, particularly with how fast the game is.
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“It’s inevitable that there will be some sloppy contact, and I think we see that more and more as the game has gotten faster over the past couple of years.
“I’ve had a few charges so I have been told to bring it back a little bit.
“It sucks because you want to bring that physical presence every game, but when you get told to hold it back a bit, that’s what you’ve got to do. I want to play every week with the lads.”
Storm skipper Jesse Bromwich knows how important it is to have his New Zealand teammate on the field in the finals, especially given Melbourne’s unprecedented run of injuries in 2022.
“The message was just that we need him on the field. We’ve got too many guys out, so we can’t afford to have him missing,” Bromwich said of their chats.
“We love his aggression and the way he approaches the game, but it’s just about being smarter. He’s such a big man, so it’s hard to miss players, but the main message is we need him out there as often as possible.
“It was really good to see the big man out there for long periods of time. We need him out on the field as long as possible because of his size and his power, so it was really good to see him do so well.
The man they call “Big Nasty” lived up to that moniker on Thursday night when he was moved to the back row before kick-off to nullify Penrith’s Viliame Kikau and to run riot a bit wider without having to do so much work in the middle .
It was the first time he’d started an NRL game in the back row, but coach Craig Bellamy will have to consider doing it more often given how well he played.
Asofa-Solomona revealed it was the first time he’d played in the second row since 2014 when he scored 13 tries in 18 games to make the Holden Cup Team of the Year.
“I thought he did a really good job,” Bellamy said after the 16-0 win over the defending premieres.
“The other benefit is he doesn’t have to do all the tackling in the middle, so he got to play bigger minutes.”
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