Tonight he produces an uncanny portrayal of a pantomime villain by trying to remove Robbie Farah's eyeballs with his bare hands.

It will be interesting to see if the big Pom gets charged with eye-gouging.

If his name was Josh McGuire, you'd imagine he would escape with a fine.

Twice this year the teflon-coated Queenslander has avoided suspension, prompting the NRL's head of football, Graham Annesley, to declare recently: "There is a difference between a facial and poking around in the eyes of an opponent, and what we would traditionally call eye-gouging."

It's a bit of a grey area, but given that Farah needs a labrador and cane to finish the match, perhaps Burgess has pushed the boundaries of fair play a tad too far.

Looking on the bright side, big George should have some free time on his hands in the near future to resume his thespian pursuits.

DRAGONS forward Jeremy Latimore is the unlikely hero of his team's 22-14 win against the Cows ... before he has even set foot on the field.

Stuck in a traffic snarl on the way to Wollongong after a fatal 10-vehicle truck and car accident, Latimore starts worrying whether he will arrive in time for kick-off.

"The traffic was banked right up so I said: 'If I see a guy on a motorbike I am going to ask him if he can give me a ride'," Latimore reveals.

"A lad has drove past and I go: 'Hey brother can you drop me?' He wasn't that keen, then he said: 'Anything for the Dragons'. I got on the back and we were dodging traffic."

At Adelaide Oval, the top-of-the-table clash/grand final rematch between the Chooks and Storm attracts a Sheffield Shield-size crowd of 16,297. Apparently they were the only people in South Australia not rugged up in their living rooms watching the AFL blockbuster between Geelong and Adelaide Crows.

DAVE Klemmer's return from a fractured wrist inspires the Knights to a 26-12 win against the Broncos.

In particular, Klemmer seems to relish hammering Brisbane's 118-kilogram halfback, Matt Lodge, at every opportunity.

It's a performance that reminds everyone Klem is the premier prop in the game and ensures he will be one of the first NSW players picked for Origin III.

In Darwin, Eels coach Brad Arthur starts the game against Canberra with at least a dozen bottles of water in front of him and, over the next 80 minutes, manages to guzzle the lot.

Presumably it's hot and humid up there in the NT, but Arthur's liquid intake is mind-boggling, regardless.

You'd hate to try to keep up with him in a post-match shout of Darwin stubbies.

FOR most players, a dislocated kneecap is a season-ending injury. For English Super League forward Joe Westerman, it's just a flesh wound.

"I just twisted in the tackle and Mose Masoe came in with the chop and my knee just popped out," Westerman explains after the Hull derby.

"I looked at my leg and saw my kneecap on the side and I felt like I had to just smack it back in.

"It wasn't really an excruciating pain. It freaked me out more than anything because it looked so weird."

Apparently it's a regular occurrence. "It's a gladiator sport and we had no interchanges left so he stayed out there," Hull FC coach Lee Radford says afterwards.

Meanwhile, NSW coach Brad Fittler appears in urgent need of an HIA concussion test after leaving David Klemmer out of his team for Origin III.

THE future of the world game is thrown into chaos after the Lebanese Rugby League Federation announces that 17 of their best players have been suspended and are facing misconduct charges.

The banned stars include NRL regulars Robbie Farah, Mitchell Moses, Tim Mannah and Josh Mansour, who are apparently at loggerheads with the governing body and threatened to tape over the LRLF logos on their playing kit for the recent Test against Fiji.

Considering Fiji won that game 58-14, coaching the Lebanon B team would appear a tough gig for the recently appointed Rick Stone.

NSW halfback Nathan Cleary reveals the secret of his rapid recovery from his ankle injury - oysters.

"Someone sent me an article of good foods to eat while you have a ligament injury and oysters happened to be on there," he says.

I remember being told many years ago that "oysters put lead in your pencil" - whatever that means - but apparently they have other qualities that may one day make all NRL physios redundant.

RABBITOHS general manager Shane Richardson describes the nine-game suspension imposed on George Burgess as "a tragedy for George and his family".

Richo adds that "George is a loving father, brother and son" and "an ornament to the club".

He denies that the convicted two-time eye-gouger is a "grub".

"Grub is a terrible word to use. He's made a mistake and did the wrong thing but that's not his character," Richardson says.

Fair enough. It's not as if George has ever been suspended for a squirrel grip, as brother Sam was in 2013, or a head-butt, as twin sibling Thomas was a few weeks ago. Although there was that incident when George was suspended in 2015 for throwing a water bottle at a rival player ...

But, of course, those Burgess boys, they're not grubs.