Tough Tim anxious to make up for lost time
BY BRETT KEEBLE
20/06/2008
KNIGHTS operations manager Warren Smiles was at a training camp in New Zealand in 2004 and could not help but notice the short, stocky kid smashing the bigger, older players in the other team.
"It was in Wellington and there was a mixture of under-16 and under-18 kids and some older blokes from the Bartercard Cup [New Zealand's domestic competition] because they'd all done the camp," Smiles recalled.
"One of those older blokes was going a bit silly so this kid took it upon himself to sort him out and upended him, drove him into the ground and dropped on him with a 'suspected' elbow.
"I thought, 'Geez, tough kid. That'll do me.' He would have been 17 turning 18, and the guy on the receiving end was about 23.
"He looked like a Shane Webcke-type not that tall but just a tough, go-forward, no-nonsense sort of player."
The kid was Tim Natusch, a 182centimetre prop with a rugby background, who joined the Knights on a scholarship the following year and has stood out in their lower grades.
Natusch, who turns 22 next month, has spent the first half of this season recovering from pre-season back surgery but will continue his comeback in Central Newcastle's NSW Cup game against Auckland at EnergyAustralia Stadium at 9.55am tomorrow.
He will come off the bench, as he did in his first game back against Windsor last Saturday.
As the youngest of Peter and Virginia Natusch's seven children, Tim said he had little choice but to learn to love the tough stuff.
Reflecting on the game in which he captured the attention of the Knights' recruitment team, he said: "They were bashing us around a bit in that game, but because I've got two bigger, older brothers, they used to bash me around, so I was used to it.
"I gave them a few forearms to the face to try to sort them out a little bit . . . that's just how I try to play my game a bit tough and hard. I'm not the biggest guy, but I'd like to think I'm a little bit tougher than the average person, so that's the way I like to play."
Natusch trained the house down last summer and was on track to make his first-grade debut in the pre-season trials until he was diagnosed with a bulging disc in his lower back and went under the surgeon's knife.
"It was my first year training with the full-time squad and that was good fun. It was pretty intense, but I did all right and I was pretty confident going into the trials," he said.
"But just before round one I had to have an op to shave the disc a bit. All our rehab training is at six in the morning, so I've had 6am starts every day for three months, which was getting a bit tiresome."
Knights coach Brian Smith said Natusch, who is contracted until the end of 2009, could make his NRL debut before the end of this season.
"He's an A-grade bloke, and just slightly mad. When it comes to the physical bits, he just loves all that tough stuff, so from a fan's point of view, and the coach's, he's one to watch in NSW Cup this season," Smith said.
"Without writing him off completely for this year, what he does this year will be important in so much as where he gets to start and how much he makes out of next season, so we've still got high hopes for Tim."
