Newcastle get a lesson in real toughness and resilience following camp in Tamworth
The Daily Telegraph was given unprecedented access to Newcastle’s training camp in Tamworth as the Knights lent what aid they could to a community ravaged by drought.
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Newcastle Knights players were given a lesson in real resilience when they visited drought-ravaged communities to lend a hand. Michael Carayannis joined the Knights on their week-long training camp in Tamworth this week.
Adam O’Brien wants a mentally and physically tough team — Newcastle’s incoming coach has made no secret of that. The buzzword around the Knights’ first pre-season of training with O’Brien in charge has been resilience. Much of the Knights’ December training camp had been planned by the time O’Brien turned on his television set and sat down to A Current Affair.
“We had just finished training and I was eating dinner,” he said. “And in the background I see they were talking about the drought.
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“Straight away I started listening. This story comes on about a single mother of five. They have no water. There is none. They can’t shower and have no running water from their taps. “They have bore water you can’t drink so she puts that around the house so the children at least have some greenery where they can play. The rest of the property is dust.
“I’m watching it and there was a symbol of resilience and toughness right there in the region we’re going to and the theme we’re tapped into.”
The lady on his screen is Sally McFarland and O’Brien spends the next three hours trying to track down. Eventually the pair speak — that first conversation lasts for more than an hour.
THE PLAYERS
The itinerary for the training camp was largely kept a secret from the players, allowing
O’Brien to stay one step ahead of his unsuspecting group.
The team left Newcastle on Sunday afternoon and were told to wear comfortable shoes and their Knights training kit. Straight away they began to dread what their new coach had planned.
About an hour into the trip, the bus pulled into the Singleton Army base. The driver opened the doors and got off the bus as per O’Brien’s instructions. Hooker Jayden Brailey was fearing the worst.
“All week Adam was saying, ‘Don’t worry boys it’s not an army camp’,” Brailey said. “We had music going, everyone was chatting away, cards were being played.
“We pulled into the army barracks and the music stopped and everyone shut up. I texted my family saying, ‘You might not hear from me for a few days because I’m in an army camp’. I had to text 10 minutes later telling them it was a false alarm.”
O’Brien was true to his word — this would not be a military boot camp.
GETTING INTO GEAR
The army-decoy may have been the new coach’s way of having “a bit of fun” but the next morning was no laughing matter for the players.
Based for the week at Farrer Memorial Agricultural High School in Tamworth, the players met for breakfast at 5am ahead of what would be one of the largest training loads they had done.
“When I presented for the job, I asked in the budget for a footy camp,” O’Brien said. “I was mindful of just not going down the path of everyone who I’ve worked with.
“We did army camps in Melbourne and the Roosters do a Christchurch camp. I’ve been in a Melbourne-type footy camp in Geelong.
“I wanted to build some physical and mental toughness in the team. I thought we needed a good, hard-style footy camp. They didn’t need to know what we were doing, they just needed to get through it.
“The other part was the connection to the community. It’s important we are representing our region. I thought we could get a footy camp and connection to the community and we could build some mental toughness. And build some mental toughness that’s not about us.
“If you’re in a position that you can do something positive, then you should and we are.”
EMOTIONAL MEETING
After some brutal physical training sessions, O’Brien called the group together again on Monday evening in front off a couple of screens and showed them the A Current Affair program. Only Hymel Hunt, of the group, had seen it before — and these tough and uncompromising characters struggled to keep their emotions in check.
“I didn’t realise how emotional it would be for them,” O’Brien said.
“I knew it would be — you would be heartless if you didn’t feel moved. But how much they grabbed hold of it took me by surprise. They’ve got big hearts — and in the right place.”
As soon as the five-minute piece ended, O’Brien introduced Sally to a stunned playing group. She spoke to the players for about 45 minutes about her daily fight for existence.
“It was emotional,” Brailey said. “I remember looking around and seeing the boys get emotional. We all take pride in our country — to see the struggles going on out here was pretty devastating. To see Sally and her kids walk into the door was really powerful.
“It made everyone fight back the tears a bit more. We play 80 minutes of football and we can go back to our families. These guys don’t know when the drought will be finished.”
HELPING HAND
The group and Sally moved to the dining room, where they were greeted by a dozen local farmers and their families. They sat spread among the players – among them, the parents of former Canberra skipper Alan Tongue – and shared their own tales.
After dinner, O’Brien stood up in front of his players.
“See the people you’re sitting alongside?” O’Brien told them. “Well, we’re all getting up at 4am tomorrow and working on their farms.”
The players and staff were broken into groups of three or four and spread out across the New England region. Some milked cows. Others built fences, collected feed. Another performed a vasectomy on a cow.
For backrower Mitch Barnett, it was an easy fit.
“I grew up a dairy farm so I was back there,” Barnett said. “I was milking a few cattle, flipping some tyres. Bringing some joy to their day was priceless.”
Sutherland Shire-raised Brailey admitted with was “out of my comfort area”.
“I’m very much a city slicker,” he said. “I don’t have any experience on the farm. It was good fun. I had a ball learning a lot of things … by the time we left, I was covered in faeces.”
The players returned from the farm to complete another gruelling session as temperatures soared into the mid-30s, leaving some players battling heatstroke.
THE COMMUNITY
This was more than a token visit by the Knights. They donated $50,000 to drought relief but spent genuine time with the community and O’Brien has vowed to return. As the players spent a couple of hours conducting a coaching clinic and signing session with 300 children, O’Brien and his staff sat with local coaches — including ex-Test player Tom Learoyd-Lahrs — and offered guidance and answered questions.
The farmers were invited to a team dinner at a local pub where the players were told to dip into their own pockets and ensure the locals did not have to buy them a drink all night. Kalyn Ponga sat next to his “adopted” farm family over dinner.
“I would like it to be etched in the players’ memories throughout the year,” O’Brien said. “We will work themes around this camp around different stages of our year, based on an anchor that’s created from being here. This gave them a real indication of what is tough and what isn’t.
“The farmers said it was good to break their day up, getting them off their properties — they got talking to each other. We were always going to get more out of this than them.”
So meticulous is O’Brien in his planning that he spread the team out across six restaurants for dinner on Friday night.
“Rather than go to one place where they get all the spoils, we’ve put money into the tills of a few places,” O’Brien said.
“With the drought, it causes you to do more work but you don’t get any more money.
“You don’t get any more resilient than that. If we can get this footy team anywhere near like these farmers, we will be right.”
Originally published as Newcastle get a lesson in real toughness and resilience following camp in Tamworth