Mark Gasnier has fended off many opponents but this time he's swatted away his club, his Test jumper and his loyalty to the game that made him a superstar.
Gasnier is the second Dragons skipper to walk out on the club in three years, following Trent Barrett out the door for the big money in Europe.
Barrett choose English Super League, while Gasnier will earn a reported $1 million a season to play rugby in France.
Gasnier has no background in rugby, no passion for the code and no knowledge of what the future holds, except he'll become even wealthier than his present status as one of the highest paid players in the NRL.
As Nathan Brown said just last Sunday - money is the biggest motivator for league players today. And the bigger the bucks, the more irresistible it becomes.
Gasnier's announcement yesterday that he's quitting the Dragons ends an almost yearly charade of threats by the player to leave - all countered by excuses and incompetence from Dragons' management.
Not once in the past four seasons - since Gasnier first mooted quitting to join English Super League club Wigan in 2004 - have Dragons management told the player he was under contract to St George Illawarra and should be loyal to his club.
Remember a few seasons ago how Gasnier was "confused" and needed a rest. No problem.
He was allowed to stay home and miss a game in New Zealand against the Warriors.
Then there was the texting scandal in 2004 while in Origin camp for NSW. The Dragons fined their star and the matter was closed.
Then, with his contract almost up in 2004, Gasnier was apparently being courted by Wigan, even though their boss Maurice Lindsay denied it.
Gasnier re-signed in 2004 and again in 2006, though this present contract has been beset with dramas over third party payments not honoured.
Which brings us to 2008.
Gasnier is made captain, but just a week before the new season kicks off, he is out in Kings Cross until 4am, almost getting into a fight. Not a good image for the captain. No worries, the Dragons did their best to cover up the incident.
Finally, with Gasnier's French deal almost inked, one more rash of headlines as Peter Doust tells the NRL how players should be allowed to make extra cash in Europe in the off-season, then return to the NRL for the next premiership season.
This can't be the same Peter Doust who less than 12 months ago did all he could to stop Chase Stanley from making his league Kiwi Test debut because he said Stanley was too inexperienced for Test football.
Proposing that a player can play 30-plus NRL games a season, plus Origins and Tests, then play rugby in France or wherever and return for another 30-plus next NRL season is nonsense.
If Doust's proposal was approved, it'd open a whole new area of work for player agents and lawyers.
For starters, who pays the tab when a 24/7 league/rugby player gets hurt and misses a chunk of his NRL campaign?
And what about having an off-season rest? Or even doing a pre-season at his NRL club?
Funny how every January the media are told by NRL clubs that their pre-season schedule is so scientific, so state-of-the-art and so vital to how a team performs during the season.
Yeah, right.
Now with Gasnier going, Doust's 365-day professional player concept looks like a smokescreen to deflect attention from the fact he couldn't stop his star player walking out on the club while under contract.
No doubt Gasnier's immediate priority is leading the Dragons to premiership glory.
Nice farewell, given the Dragons' last premiership was back in 1979.
And no doubt Gasnier can expect plenty of scrutiny in the run to the finals, especially after his disappointing return from injury against Canberra, when Brown kept moving him from the centres to fullback and on to the wing.
Next Monday night, Gasnier will be expected to go head-to-head against Greg Inglis and we all know what happened the last time the pair met.
Some will say Gasnier's career at the Dragons has been a soap opera for years and there's a few more episodes to play out in the next couple of months.
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