How Jesse Bromwich rebounded from the darkest moment of his career

FIVE months after the lowest point of his NRL career, Melbourne’s premiership winning prop Jesse Bromwich has come full circle.

IT’S easy to think of the Storm as unthinking, unfeeling robots.

When they’re so damn consistent, when the players leave and get replaced and other guys come in and nothing changes, ever, they just keep winning and winning with a precision that feels downright mechanical, it’s hard to see them as machines.

But they’re just men, just like all the others, and that shined through when Billy Slater wept as he was handed the Clive Churchill medal following the Storm’s 34-6 win over North Queensland in the grand final.

Jesse Bromwich feels that emotion, he values it and leans on it. Earlier in the year, it’s what kept his life together.

In May, Bromwich was embroiled in a drugs scandal which resulted in him being stripped of the New Zealand Test captaincy, exiled from the World Cup squad, fined $20,000, suspended for two matches and dumped from the Storm’s leadership group.

Bromwich made a crucial break early in the grand final.

“There were some really dark days there for me and my family. I was in a really dark place” Bromwich told The Daily Telegraph.

“My family and this club, they really supported me through everything.

“I decided I was just going to put everything into this season, on and off the field.

“I was going to stop being silly off the field and start knuckling down at training and trying to do the right thing.

“Every week we got closer to this grand final, and I started believing we actually did have the team to win the whole comp.

“I had a really deep belief in our team and the coaches, and look where we are now.”

Bromwich was part of the Storm’s 2012 premiership team, but says the emotion of the situation makes 2017 a completely different beast.

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“Coops is finishing. We don’t know what Bill’s doing. Tohu (Harris) and Macca (Jordan McLean) are leaving. My brother was there this time. We lost last year.

“I went up to him (Cronk) and said ‘thank you for everything’. I just said ‘thanks for everything, it’s been an absolute pleasure’ and we embraced.

“The emotions are just through the roof.”

It all spilt over for Bromwich after the match, especially when he spoke to his younger brother Kenny.

“I think I got through a few of the boys and gave them all hugs, and then I turned around and looked at Kenny. There was a few tears coming down.

The Storm big man is now a duel premiership winner.

“Running around the backyard all those years — we had a tough upbringing, we didn’t have much, and to be where we are tonight? It’s a dream come true.”

And of course, because this is the Storm after all, the intensity of the feelings around Sunday’s grand final win were matched by the clinical, surgical display on the field.

Bromwich and the rest of the forwards shined as a group in shutting down Cowboys steamroller Jason Taumalolo.

Emotion won’t do the job against Taumalolo, as the Roosters found out to their detriment in the prelim final. If you fight fire with fire he’ll burn you down.

To slow him down, the key is to race up, together, hit him together, take him down together.

And that’s just what Melbourne did — Taumalolo was restricted to 101 metres gained, his lowest total of the season.

“I put that down to a group effort, getting up and doing a job on him” says Bromwich.

“He’s one man, and we’re a pack of forwards who did a pretty good job.”

Originally published as How Jesse Bromwich rebounded from the darkest moment of his career