- Video
-
Club Roar
Captured a great grassroots sporting moment? We want to see it!Content Collections
The Roar Community
- Join
- Login
The seeds were sown for Craig Bellamy’s magnificent coaching career on a golf course in Queanbeyan when he showed up for training with his dislocated shoulder heavily strapped to show teammates his relentless dedication.
It wasn’t just any training session. Bellamy, despite still being a player, was given the task of overseeing Canberra’s “Fat Club” of players who needed to shed a few kilos.
He would make them run up and down the golf course, setting the example with his hard-nosed approach – the same kind of attitude he took into his coaching career which will reach the 500-game milestone on Thursday night when the Storm square off against South Sydney at AAMI Park.
Former teammate Steve Jackson, the scorer of the famous 1989 grand final match-winning try in extra time, said Bellamy’s shoulder injury two years earlier was greeted with muffled cheers by his Fat Club comrades until he told them he would be ready to meet them at the usual spot at 6am.
“He dislocated his shoulder and us fat blokes thought you beauty, we won’t be on but he came to the training session the next morning with his arm that tightly strapped to his body that he couldn’t feel it when he was running with us,” Jackson recalled.
“He still beat us. That’s just the character he is and that’s the way he coaches.
“I remember with the Fat Club we used to go from tee to hole the first couple of mornings and then the other way around the next couple of mornings because of the undulations of the ground. He didn’t want us favouring one leg all the time. He was already thinking ahead.”
Former Maroons and Kangaroos representative Gary Belcher was part of those all-conquering Raiders sides of the late 1980s and early ‘90s and the fullback said Bellamy was “always the first guy to strip down to his budgy smugglers in those hard pre-season training sessions in the hot Canberra summers”.
“He was certainly a great clubman, there’s no doubt about that. A hard trainer, super fit, heavily involved with what the club was doing,” Belcher said.
“Craig realised that the more you put in the more you get out, his time at the Broncos doing strength and conditioning had quite an influence on him as well – seeing the advantages of being fitter than your opponent.”
Doing his coaching apprenticeship at Brisbane in the late 1990s and early 2000s, Bellamy was trainer, strength and conditioning coach, assistant coach and filled several other roles that clubs now employ an armada of staff to do, according to former Broncos forward Corey Parker.
“What he demanded back then I still see as what he demands now – that’s hard work, it’s the ability to want to get better all the time. You see the players he has and the way they speak about being part of the system and that’s Craig Bellamy. That hasn’t changed over the years,” Parker said.
“That’s the beauty of successful head coaches – they don’t negotiate in the areas that they know work 100% right. Wayne Bennett, Craig, Trent Robinson have all got their own ways of looking at the game but if you peel all the layers back they’re all very similar in that way.
“You can’t get anywhere unless you’re dedicated and committed to put in the extra effort in the areas you need. Bellyache has never shirked away from that. If any player goes to Melbourne they know one thing’s coming and that’s hard work on the football paddock but also off it analysing what you’re doing or your attention to detail about what’s going on.
“It’s not necessarily meaning blood, sweat and tears, it’s about doing everything you can so that when you play the game you’ve left no stone unturned. And that’s Craig Bellamy. They’re areas he’s never negotiated on.”
Parker, who these days is a Fox League commentator, revealed he almost followed Bellamy south in 2003, the first of the coach’s 20 consecutive seasons at the Storm helm.
“I was pretty close, very, very close. It was just a timing thing, I’d only played 10 first-grade games at the time and they needed a young front-rower and they offered me a really good contract and I stayed for less than half of that at Brisbane,” he said.
“All I ever wanted to do as a kid was play for the Broncos and I thought if I can make it at the Broncos, I can make it anywhere because that’s the powerhouse of a club it was.
“It turned out alright, I won a comp, played Origin and for Australia but there were some hard conversations about going to join him.”
Corey Parker hits it up for the Broncos in 2002. (Photo: Daniel Berehulak/Getty Images)
It’s history now that Bellamy has become one of the greatest coaches in Australian rugby league history with titles in 2012, ‘17 and ‘20, a tally which would have been higher if not for the Storm having two grand final wins stripped for salary cap rorts that were exposed more than a decade ago.
Heading into his milestone match, Bellamy’s record stands at 349 wins plus two draws from 499 games with his success rate an all-time high of 70 per cent.
Jackson believes the key to Bellamy’s success was he had to carve out a playing career the hard way and he’s passed on what he learned from 150 games as a player at Canberra from 1982-92.
“Craig was a coach when he was a player, that’s the way we all looked at him. You look at the likes of Wally Lewis, they can be the best coaches in the world because they’ve got the respect of their peers but because it happened naturally for those blokes, they didn’t know the process,” he said.
“Wally could watch the ball in the air and know which way it was going to bounce. His instinct told him that but when he tried to break it down he’d get frustrated. He coached me at the Gold Coast and he used to want players to do what he already knew and I’m thinking of course we’re not going to know what he knows.
“Craig was a good first-grade player but he had to go through that process to be the best player he could be.”
Belcher said Bellamy, who was a first-grade regular at the Raiders before the club brought in a bunch of high-profile Queensland recruits, would have been an ideal bench utility in the modern game.
“He always had to be part of your team. He’s the bloke who never let you down if he had to play in the centres or five-eighth or lock, anywhere, he’d get the job done and that’s a good reflection of the job he’s done as a coach,” Belcher said.
“Craig’s not asking his players to do anything that he wouldn’t have done. If he had to have played front row he would have had a crack at it.
“He didn’t miss tackles, he turned up where he had to be, he was a great team man and always wanted everyone around him to do well. He was shuffled around into different positions but I never saw him spit the dummy about it.”
Craig Bellamy boots the ball for the Raiders. (raiders.com.au)
Before he embarked on his Storm journey, Bellamy first made his mark as a coach filling in for Bennett who was on State of Origin duty in 2002 when a Broncos team missing nine Maroons representatives produced the upset of the season.
Playing at Campbelltown against a Wests Tigers side full of established first-graders, Bellamy oversaw a ragtag bunch that was comprised of rookies, a few journeymen with only Scott Prince, Shane Walker and Brad Meyers seen as regular NRL team members.
Parker was one of “Bellamy’s Baby Broncos” who produced the famous 28-14 triumph and recalled he was “classed as an experienced player because I’d played 10 games in 2001”.
“I remember the week being really fun, he took the pressure of expectation away from everyone. He gave us a role which made us feel like we could do and that was to uphold what the jersey means,” he said.
“We had some good young talent at the time, we competed hard and did what we did and halfway through I remember thinking we’re up to our eyeballs in this and we ended up coming away with what was arguably one of the club’s best victories.
“One of the proudest thing from a player’s perspective was returning to training and seeing the expressions and feeling all the love from all of the Origin reps that would have sat there and watched on TV from camp. It made you feel warm and fuzzy for a long time. Craig was the fill-in coach that day and he was on that same journey as us.”
Broncos players celebrate a try as Tigers players show ther frustration at Campbelltown on May 31st, 2002. (Photo:Chris McGrath/Getty Images)
Despite being 62, he is showing no signs of slowing down despite indicating he may step away from his role into a director of coaching position at some stage during the five-year contract extension he signed last season.
Bellamy on Wednesday said the club had given him more time to make his decision despite a March 31 deadline a clause in the deal.
“I was supposed to make a decision but it’s been a bit of a disrupted pre-season for me in a few ways and I haven’t worked that out so the club has been good enough to give me a bit more time,” Bellamy said.
“I don’t want to be letting anybody down so when I lose some enthusiasm or I think I’m not being as thorough or as hard-working as I need to be, that’s when it’s time to go. I’m not sure what that reason will be but things change in your life.”
Bellamy’s renowned intensity has been as apparent as ever the past two seasons in leading Melbourne to grand final glory in 2020 and a record-breaking minor premiership last year before bowing out in the preliminary final to Penrith.
Jackson, who still keeps involved in the game as coach of Mackay’s Foley Shield side, said Bellamy’s famous sprays of equal parts spittle and invective in the coach’s box were both comical and representative of his passion.
“He takes every hit, he takes every run, he must feel sore after a game of football because he’s just so full on. There must be a punching bag in the back of those boxes,” he said.
Steve Jackson and Craig Bellamy after the 1989 grand final win over Balmain. A treasured photo from the Jackson collection.
“I have a giggle to myself when I see him – you ride on every little thing and that’s why he’s so good at what he does.”
Parker said he would never want to see Bellamy not wear his heart on his sleeve.
“I love that side of him blowing up deluxe in the coach’s box during games because so many coaches hide it. On the outside with the facial expressions there’s not much going on but under the desk there’s kicking and stomping and all sorts of stuff going on.
“Craig, he can’t hide it. He’s riding every second, not minutes. He rides it all because he demands excellence.”