I’ve never met Craig Wing before, and I don’t know if he’s always like this, but the one thing that struck me about him was how positive and excited he is about his football.

It’s a refreshing change in this day when you talk to lots of players who are so guarded that they are positively boring and you come away wondering how the hell you’ll craft a story out of the dreck you got served up.

Luckily Wing isn’t in that category, although to be fair it might have something to do with him being between codes, between bosses and pretty much on holiday until January next year when he reports for duty with the NTT Communications rugby team in Japan.

His glittering NRL career is now officially over, courtesy of a last gasp win over the hapless Sharks, where Wing scored a try, got an assist and missed a conversion right at the end.

As Wing himself put it: “You don’t play too many games like that, that end up being that way so I was pretty happy with the final washup. I missed the conversion though at the end, so I was pretty disappointed. I struck it so well! Nearly kicked it out of the park, but I missed it!”.

Was he disappointed that Souths didn’t do better in the last couple of seasons?

“Yeah, very much so. There were so many games that we were in a position to win or we really could have won and we performed poorly – and then there were games where we were expected to do it tough or lose and we smashed ‘em. The talent was definitely there, but I guess it’s more mental than anything when you get results like that”.

“We always trained really well. There was never a period of time when we didn’t train well. It was just how we turned up on the day. We didn’t have a team where 4 or 5 blokes couldn’t turn up but the rest would carry them through. We had a team where if we were all on, we were a great team, but if a few of us weren’t then it cost us”.

Souths up and down record has left the jury out on former coach Jason Taylor’s reign, but Wing has few doubts about Taylor’s ability as a coach.

“What I liked was that he was always learning and always looking for alternate solutions to different problems. He wasn’t afraid to look at what we were doing and overhaul the whole thing if he thought there was a better way.

“The biggest difference in him was from last year to this year.

“We lost I think 10 in a row last year and then started to win a couple at the end, well I was injured then and I was watching what he was going through. There were different phases there when he was evaluating what we were doing and asking were we doing the right things, could we be doing something else or more of something or less of something.

“He kept tinkering and tinkering with it and it started to come good at the end of the year and then our off season was totally different to the year before. As a result we started the year quite well I thought.”

“I know the fact that we didn’t make the finals doesn’t look too good, but what’s overlooked is that most of the players, particularly the younger guys, are much better footballers now. They have a much better understanding of what it takes to play first grade, what their position involves and everything like that.”

“Souths are on the rise. Since I’ve been there I’ve seen a gradual improvement and I think next year they might make the finals. I think if JT was there, they would have had every chance”.

Whether Souths do well next year is a moot point for Wing at least given that he is no longer a league player.

But he will leave the game with a swag of great memories and will be remembered by many fans as a player who was unlucky to be pigeonholed as a utility, or not given more of a chance as a genuine playmaker.

Typically though, Wing concentrates only on the positives when asked about his memories, and you can hear the satisfaction in his voice.

“Of course, I remember my debut when I first started, although I didn’t do too much in my first year but it was great to be playing first grade. Then the glory years at the Roosters of course. They’re probably the best years of my life.

“We were such a tight knit group of blokes, we all lived in the area then, whereas towards the back end of my time there were guys living all over the place, at Cronulla and Campbelltown even. Now people are so spread out because it is so expensive to live in the Eastern Suburbs.”

“But I just remember those years when we were allowed to have a drink and it was a big part of playing, that socializing afterwards. They’re definitely the best years that I can remember playing footy, purely because of the fact that we were so tight and we had so much fun.

“We played mostly Friday night games and we had Saturday and Sunday off so we kind of had similar lives like young guys growing up. It’d be easy to call a drink at the Beach Road or somewhere local and everyone would be there and you felt like the odd one out if you weren’t there.”

“That was a big part of our success, just being tight. I look at Melbourne and I think they are close to what we had back then. They’ve got the core group of players who stick together.”

It’s clear talking to Wing that he values the friendships he has made in rugby league, and that he is not only respected, but respectful of the players he has done battle with over the years.

“The player I most liked playing with was definitely Fitzy (Craig Fitzgibbon). I’ve always said that.

“I hold Fitzy in such high regard. He’s a great player and he’s so consistent and so reliable. Personally I think the Roosters could have been better to him – everyone talks about how old he is, but that’s only because he looks old.

“If you put him on the training paddock, he’s fitter than all the young guys, he trains harder than all the young guys, he’s more professional than anyone and when he’s on the field he’s always putting in. He’s one of the reliable ones. He’s so consistent – I can’t see why they wouldn’t have signed him for next year. I don’t understand it. He’s the type of guy they could build a team around.”

“As far as players where you knew it would be a tough night at the office, the obvious one is probably Joey (Andrew Johns) because the whole team had to be on their game, or he’d find you out somewhere. He’d find a hole or find a weakness, he had such a good football brain.

“Having said that, I enjoyed playing against him because we had a bit of a rivalry between Newcastle and the Roosters.”

“I always hoped for a starting Origin spot at hooker and so I always tried to play my best in City/Country against Danny Buderus. That was probably one of my best rivalries, against Bedsy, and even though I got a few man of the match awards against him, I was never going to get the spot, because he and Joey had the hooker/half combination going.

“But I remember those games and those confrontations fondly and during the tours I went on I always roomed with Bedsy and really enjoyed his company – he’s a great guy.”

“I also remember winning the Grand Final too – coming back to Bondi Junction on the double-decker bus and we couldn’t even get into the club it was so full.”

The reminiscing for Wing these days is not restricted to his league career though, but includes casting his mind back to the last time he played rugby, perhaps searching for a few old moves or techniques he can take with him to Japan.

“I started league when I was 4 years old and then played union when I was 6, and played both of them right through until the end of high school. Pretty much every time my contract came up, I seriously considered going back to union.

“Early on I never did because there was so much I wanted to do in league, but from about 2005 onwards I was thinking I wanted to go back to union. Unfortunately the game started changing then. It started to be a lot more about kicking and field position and kicking for goal, and it was a lot less like the game that I was used to playing when I was back at school.”

“I’m not too worried about the negativity around rugby at the moment. Maybe if I was going to a team here in Australia it would be different, but I’ve heard different reports about how they play in Japan. The game is a fair bit quicker I think. I’m really looking forward to it.”

And of course, like any good player worth his contract money, Wing is already scheming and dreaming about ways he can bring his vast league experience to bear in the union game.

“I watch games here in Australia and I see so much opportunity on the field. It’s so structured now, and yet there’s so much opportunity. Players don’t have the chance to play their hand and yet that’s what could really make things interesting.

“That’s what excites me going over there. I’ve got this rugby league experience and we play a certain way and I’ve done a few things differently. So I hope we can try a few new things about how we approach the game”.

“I’ve got a certain skill set that I hope I can pass on to the players over there. They have the 2019 World Cup over there, so every year they’ll be gearing towards that and putting a lot of effort into the player there and recruiting other players and working on the way they play”.

Is this Future Coach Craig Wing talking?

“Well I’ve been talking to Shannon Fraser a bit who’s the coach at NTT, and getting a bit excited and saying I’ve got so many ideas and so much stuff that I’d like to pass on and maybe toss it around. I’ve had some great coaches in the past and some coaches who have done well and haven’t done well, and I’ve seen some coaches go through different phases and how players react to that.”

“I don’t know what to expect, but I know that I’ve got so much knowledge and so much stuff that I’d like to pass on or use to our advantage.

“I’ve got so many ideas about how I’d like to play, although I don’t even know what position I’m going to play yet! I’m quite confident I can play anywhere in the backline but I’ll let them pick the position that they think suits me best.”

“I’m invigorated at the possibilities that might be out there and the effect I can have on the team and different ideas I can bring across from league to union.”

And if you want to know where this passion for innovation and running rugby came from, look no further than Wing’s formative years under Tony Hannon at Sydney High.

“I look at the game now, particularly the way it’s played in Australia and the way they play here is so GPS structured, you know, do this, do that, this-position-kick-it, get-to-there-run-it. I remember the year before me at Sydney High was supposed to be the best team we had had in years.

“I didn’t play because I would have had to give up all my other footy to play GPS firsts and I said stuff that, I’d rather keep playing league and union in all my other teams!”

“Anyway, my year came around and we were supposed to get flogged because all the good players and big forwards had left, but I remember I was a leaguie who played union as well with Randwick, and there were lots of kids who had public school backgrounds which is a different style of footy.

“I remember we used to play a public school style of game against GPS schools and in a year we were supposed to get beaten in every game in the GPS comp, we won our fair share and beat some good schools, probably because they didn’t know how to handle us.”

“We used to run the ball from our tryline, from different places. It was less about rucking and mauling and more about getting it out of the ruck and the maul and getting it to the backs as quickly as possible. Shifting the ball from side to side and moving it around and a lot less about positional kicking, just a less predictable game all round.”

Not that it didn’t get confusing at times.

“I remember one game when I was playing SG Ball for Souths and a lot of time I was coming from my Souths game to my school game and then playing. I used to take great pride in the fact that I used to wear my black Souths shorts, which were the silky nylon, in school games where everyone else used to wear traditional cotton rugby shorts!

“I even tried to play a game with Souths socks on once cause I literally got out of the car with my boots on and just swapped jumpers and tried to run on, but they wouldn’t let me! (laughs)”

“Even to this day, that year of football in my Year 12, when we were coached by Tony Hannon who was a great coach at High, was probably one of the most enjoyable years of football I’ve had.

“Just playing GPS football and playing rugby in that style, and I’ve always had in my mind since then that I’d like to play rugby again and try to emulate that kind of feeling.”

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