Ginger Bloke In Tonga Jersey Stands Boots Wide On A Live Hose, Reads The Group Chat Tag Calling Him Tongan And Accepts It As Official Paperwork

THE SLAB — Every crew has one, and this crew's is standing on a pump hose in a Tonga jersey with a ginger beard and total conviction that the shirt is a birth certificate. He is as white as the foam pods under his boots, he has never been talked out of it, and the group chat has now put it in writing with a tag.

The scene: forty cube of fresh mud behind him, mesh and polystyrene under him, and a bloke planted a full stride apart across the hose like he's bracing for a tackle that never comes. He is on his phone. He is reading the tag. He is nodding.

"He turned up in the jersey, told the foreman it's in the blood, and the foreman asked which blood," said one linehand. "The only island he's got is the one in his kitchen."

The tag, for the record, is the whole case. Someone in the chat called him a funny dude, someone else said everyone knows he's Tongan, and a man with that much faith needs nothing further. No papers. No flight. A jersey, a stance and a beard the colour of a rusty bar chair.

Tonga, to be clear, is a proud rugby league nation. This bloke is a proud hose-stander, and nobody has ever mixed the two up except him.

The jersey says Tonga, the boots say Blundstone, and the hose underneath him says he's the only one on this slab getting walked on.