A brief encounter with Freddy Fittler

They say you should never meet your heroes. Well, actually my heroes say I should never meet them.

For many years I had a framed poster of Brad Fittler on my living room wall. This confused many of my friends who knew that Roosters, Panthers and NSW were high on the list of my least favourite teams.

Sadly the poster came down in a recent redecorate, something my wife was less upset about than I was.

I finally got to meet the great man a few years ago. It was a memorable experience (for me) and I’ll circle back to that encounter in a minute.

Back in 2002 I was living in a far-flung corner of the empire, a country where John Ribot’s bold international vision of the greatest game of all had failed to penetrate. I’d survived all season without watching any games, but come grand final week I was getting pretty desperate.

The match was between the Roosters and the Warriors, which under normal circumstances would have been a bit of a who cares sort of game, but as I said, I was ready to watch anything.

I had managed to find out that the game could be watched on the satellite tv at the Australian High Commission. Apparently they had a nice bar and a big screen tv in their “bunker”. (This was back before the word bunker had the more sinister meaning we are familiar with today.)

So the only problem was gaining entry to this highly fortified establishment. Well a mate knew a mate and a message reached me to be waiting outside at this precise time and I would be smuggled in. However as I stood outside waiting, an enormous storm began.

And of course my contact never showed up. If you are familiar with High Commissions you will know they usually have a very harsh architecture, and the exterior is not designed to encourage people to hang around.

So I was saturated and about to give up when a car door suddenly opened and a voice said, “Get in!”.

I was driven inside and the nice man gave me dry clothes and got me a beer. You can imagine my shock when he told me he was the NZ High Commissioner.

I asked why he picked up a drenched stranger and he said it was pretty obvious I was keen to see some football. There were more NZ officials there than Australian officials, who apparently were more interested in some other code.

Suddenly I felt bad about all those jokes I’d made over the years about NZers getting excited when they go to the zoo, and so I decided I’d cheer for the Warriors. And there was plenty to cheer about in the first half, especially when Stacey Jones scored one of the great grand final tries.

The Warriors were on top until the middle of the second half when Fittler dived on a rebounded kick and was cleaned up in a horrific head on head torpedo tackle by second rower Richard Villasanti.

I thought that was the end of the Roosters as there was no way Fittler could play on. However HIA hadn’t been invented and a bandaged Fittler then exploded into a glorious display of leadership that swamped the Warriors.

Brad Fittler as a coach. (Photo by Cameron Spencer/Getty Images)

His effort that day was on a par with anything I’d seen the world’s greatest player (KW Lewis) ever produce.

A decade later I was watching an Origin match at Lang Park when I bumped into a then retired Freddy at half-time.

There was no one else around so I had the perfect opportunity to let him know how highly I regarded him.

Sadly though Queensland’s massive half-time lead was clouding the better judgment part of my brain. For some reason I channeled Fatty and yelled, “Oi Freddy, what about that one!”

Not my finest moment, but he laughed and said, “It must be great to be a Queenslander”.

And of course it is, but if you were born on the wrong side of the Tweed, in Freddy there’s at least one you could be very proud of.