My knowledge of rugby league is limited having been involved in Aussie Rules all my life but I have lived and worked in Qld and NSW when I was younger and gleaned some insights.

I’ve also watched a lot more rugby league over the past 10 years due to some of the putrid televised games of AFL where the games were reduced to resembling a poor game of soccer. The other factor has been the success of the Melbourne Storm and the leadership of their coach Craig Bellamy who is always captivating to watch and listen to.

The Storm captain Cameron Smith hasn’t announced his retirement yet and everyone is hoping he plays on into his 19th year at the crazy age of 38. Regardless of his decision he has released his biography just in time for Xmas. It’s been written in the past tense in anticipation of him ending his glittering career, but fingers crossed….

I liken Smith to Roger Federer. Similar in values, work ethic, humility, competitiveness and that relentless drive for excellence. Then there’s their responsibility to use the standing they have in their respective sports to help others. The other similarity is their decision making under pressure. These guys have resting heart rates that would barely register on an ECG machine!

The book is a fairly stock standard, easy to read sports biography although Smith’s recall of so many critical moments in games is phenomenal and will thrill Storm fans. I thought I’d just highlight some of my favourite bits:

  • Cameron’s family are everything. He has been with his wife Barb since they were 16 and his 3 x kids are priority number 1. Smith comes from a working class family in Logan between Brisbane and the Gold Coast and has never forgotten that. His feet are firmly on the ground at all times.
  • The Brisbane Broncos recruiters in the late 1990’s must still be in the foetal position having ignored Smith, Slater, Cronk and Thurston who were in their own backyard! Smith will be an immortal and the other 3 are already legends.
  • The salary cap debacle that struck the Storm in 2010, and stripped them of 2 x premierships is well documented here. What I forgot was the fact that the Storm played for zero points in 2010 as part of the punishment! It was a disgraceful and fundamentally cruel decision by Chairman David Gallop and the NRL and it’s completely insane given Manly, Cronulla and Paramatta have all been busted for breaches subsequent to 2010 and only received fines. Absolutely disgraceful. Incredibly, the Storm won the same number of games in 2010 (14) as they did in 2009, playing for nothing!
  • The ability of Craig Bellamy and Smith to overcome such a shocking setback for the club and take out the 2012, 2018 and 2020 premierships says so much about the quality of the club’s culture.
  • In the 2017 grand final, Smith was targeted by Cronulla captain Paul Gallen in that his forwards would run as hard and as many times as they could at the 88kg, 5 ft 10 inch Smith. Smith finished the game with 73 tackles! It would take an entire AFL team, 2 x games to hit that number these days. It simply defies all logic what this man’s body can withstand.
  • Cameron Smith owns just about every individual record attainable in rugby league. I won’t mention them all but these are my favourites.  17 x finals appearances with the Storm for 8 x grand finals and 5 x wins. Winning % at the Storm- 72%. Captain of the Storm for 324 games, for 239 wins (73.8%). Total games with Storm, Qld, Australia, NRL All Stars and World All Stars – 532! That number again…532!! Ridiculous.

Is he the greatest footballer ever produced in Australia? Who knows. One thing’s for sure Smith wouldn’t care. I think the following from Craig Bellamy, the man who knows him best, sums up Smith:

“As the coach of Melbourne Storm, I like to think I don’t miss much. I’ve watched Cameron Smith play a lot over the years and I thought I knew all there was to know about him. But, in the lead up to Cameron’s 400th match in 2019, one of our assistant coaches, Marc Brentnall, pointed out something I hadn’t noticed before. Whenever one of Cameron’s teammates scores a try, Cameron is always the first there to congratulate him. It sums him up as a player and a person. He enjoys the success of others.”

The book is a perfect Xmas present for the old man or anyone interested in what makes a world class athlete tick. Now from the sublime to the ridiculous….

I’ve only attended a few games of league in my life but they were all quite memorable. The first 2 x State of Origin games at the MCG in the late 80’s were interesting. Almost 90,000 at the first one after work on a Wednesday night and barely anyone had a clue what was going on! I’m convinced Melburnians would watch 2 x ants crawl up a wall if it was a contest! Early in the second one, the players had an orchestrated all in brawl which left the locals with something to talk about on the train and tram home.

In 1985 a few army mates and I attended an Australia v NZ test match at Lang Park in Brisbane. The now Suncorp Stadium is a brilliant boutique ground but back then we were sitting in a grandstand that was covered by a tin roof and tin back wall. Sort of like something you’d see at a suburban ground, just on a bigger scale. It was a full house and it felt like everyone was drunk. The game was highly physical and the tension in the air that night was palpable. Two players got sent off after the fifth fight of the night, Greg Dowling from Australia and Kevin Tamati from NZ. What eventuated was a major escalation as they both headed to the sin bin which drove the crowd into a frenzy. Shortly after, my friends and I witnessed what looked like beer flowing on the concrete under our seats. We turned around and saw 2 x enormous Maori guys urinating against the tin back wall behind us. One snapped at us, “You got a problem?”, to which I raised my hand in a gesture of resignation, and said under my breath, “Not a problem. Feel free to take a dump if you like.”

This is the vision of the send-off. Warning- it contains gratuitous violence.

In 2012, the State of Origin came to Melbourne again, this time to Etihad Stadium under the roof.  My boss, a Queenslander kindly took us out for dinner and bought us a seat for the game. The NSW and Qld fans had been drinking all day and were in a raucous state come game time. I’ve been to that stadium many times to see my beloved St Kilda, but I’ve never seen a queue at the booze stations like I saw that night. They snaked so far back that they were taking over the food stalls. In the second half, after some of the most demonic abuse I’ve ever heard from a crowd, a lunatic behind me screamed, “give him spina bifida!!” I’d had enough by this stage and knowing that any retort I gave may end up with a punch in my face, I didn’t care. I turned to him and said calmly, “That’s a congenital disease isn’t it?”. He looked at me perplexed and said, “f……n’ what?”  “It’s a birth defect” I said. He took that in for a couple of seconds then turned back to the game and yelled, “Gouge his eyes out!”

The less said the better. Go Storm!