Toby Rudolf On Beef With Robbie Farah | “If I Had Clocked Him In The Face No One Would’ve Done Anything”

One of the game’s most quirky players Toby Rudolf joined Aaron Woods for another episode of Footy Talk’s Woodsy’s Club Tour and explained how he developed a really personal beef with NRL superstar Robbie Farah.

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Whilst playing through the South Sydney Rabbitohs system, Rudolf was training with the first team.

Though, his frustrations at not being given a chance in the NRL reached its boiling point and Farah, his friend at the time, got caught in the middle.

“I was running over Robbie Farah for fun”, said Rudolf.

“He’s angry because Damien Cook is starting”, added Woods.

But Rudolf added, “he’d just been dropped that week, which I didn’t even know.”

Tensions continued to boil as Rudolf kept targeting the 2005 NRL premiership winner until the hooker got one back.

“He took me down, got an underhook and put his elbow down the bridge of my nose”, Rudolf explained.

“He went down on the ground and put his full weight onto my face.

“I got up, instantly pissing out blood out of my mouth and my nose.

“He just pushed me in the face and said get away from me.”

Yet, it wasn’t the classic tale of what happens on the field, stays on the field as Farah made his frustrations known in the training sheds.

“He said, can’t believe you’d let a back-rower do that, then I said, can’t believe you’d let a reserve-grader run over an Origin player.

“That got a bit of a laugh.”

But a young gun stirring up the pot against a veteran usually would see the junior buck get into trouble.

Though, Rudolf had the backing of the senior members of the squad, and the head coach.

“I had calls from boys, like, Michael Maguire, Sam Burgess, John Sutton saying, if you had clocked him the face no one would’ve done anything.”

“But I was an emotional kid, I actually ran upstairs and started crying because we were pretty close.

“Afterwards, he didn’t apologise, I was a bit off it.

“We were good mates back then, we had a couple nights out, a couple of coffees.”

Woodsy continued with his questions though, asking how future altercations went between the two since they never got the chance to play against each other.

“I was out at the Coogee Pavilion years later in 2019.

“He tried to say hello to me but I was like, yeah, nah.

“Bridges burnt, you know what you did.

“But we sort of made up but then I saw him in Bali two weeks later and it was like I wasn’t there!

“Full Cold Shoulder!”

But we’ll give credit to Rudolf, he’s a very honest man, admitting that if it hypothetically got to a point where hands needed to be thrown, fighting is not really his forte.

“I can’t throw them for one,

“If I lose, that’s f#####.

“But if I win, I just beat up a f###### hooker.

“It’s a lose-lose!”