carl webb nrl died
Don’t miss the biggest NRL news. The categories you follow will be added to My News. Former Queensland tough Carl Webb has died. The former Broncos, Cowboys and Eels forward died Thursday night after a four-year battle with motor neurone disease.
Webb was 42 years old.
In his prime, Webb was one of rugby league’s toughest men, racking up 187 first-class caps in a remarkable career that included 12 home games for Queensland and a test for Australia in 2008.
A close friend of Webb paid tribute to the burly forward who was discovered by Broncos scouts when he was 15 at Dalby.
“Carl was a wrecking ball… the most Mike Tyson (heavyweight boxing legend) person I’ve ever seen,” he said.
Motor neuron disease is a progressive neurological disorder that destroys the cells that control muscle activity, making it difficult to move and eventually breathe, speak and swallow.
Webb’s heartbreaking and courageous battle is believed to have ended when he fell on Thursday night at his Dalby home.
“Everything you do is a battle,” Webb told News Corp in one of his last interviews of 2021.
“Day by day, I’m on a slow decline.”
The Mt Isa-born second rower was a 108kg wonder who was state boxing champion in his teens and starred in one of the State of Origin’s greatest moments.
On his Origin debut for Queensland in 2001, a 20-year-old Webb weaved his way through several Blues players to score a spectacular try that inspired the Maroons’ surprise victory over NSW at Suncorp Stadium with the ‘Babes’ of the coach Wayne Bennett.
Two decades later, Webb was living in a specially adapted unit in Brisbane, just 4km from the scene of the Suncorp exploits that made him a Queensland hero.
