Parramatta Eels NRL coach Jason Ryles admitted that he ‘s**’ himself while rescuing a young woman trapped inside a car that had flipped onto its side and caught on fire.
The drama unfolded while Ryles was heading home to Wollongong with his family following his team’s 32-12 loss against South Sydney Rabbitohs at CommBank Stadium on Thursday night.
He had just turned off on to New Mount Pleasant Road at Mount Ousley when he noticed an overturned car on fire.
He pulled over further down the road so his kids couldn’t see what was happening and ran back to help other bystanders.
Dramatic photos showed Ryles leaning into the vehicle to pull the woman out.
‘There was a guy already there. He smashed the back window with a Yeti bottle, then I grabbed the girl out of the car,’ Ryles told the Sydney Morning Herald.
‘I went from thinking about a footy game to me thinking, ‘If we didn’t get here in time, this girl could have been in all sorts of trouble’.
‘I won’t lie, I s**t myself, and it was pretty scary.’
The men managed to free the woman from the vehicle before it was fully engulfed in flames
Ryles said that the young woman, who was on her way from work, was in shock but otherwise ‘fine’.
He added that police gave him ‘a bit of stick’ about the game when they arrived.
Ryles was earlier captured by television cameras in the Eels coaching box throwing his walkie-talkie in disgust as his side recorded their 10th loss of the season.
‘I probably don’t have the vocabulary to articulate how I actually feel, so disappointing is probably one way to put it,’ he told reporters at his post-match press conference.
