‘I have got this confidence in myself’: Billy Slater on secret to State of Origin success
Billy Slater has opened up on why he thinks he makes a successful State of Origin coach, why he values his quiet farm life with his family, and being a Magic Millions ambassador.
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Queensland State of Origin coach Billy Slater has just finished ironing his linen shirt and is pulling on his new Argentinian polo boots in the garage of his newly built home an hour outside Melbourne.
“I actually keep all my clothes in here,” Slater says. “I have cupboards upstairs but I don’t use them. Besides, this is closer to the laundry.”
The 40-year-old living NRL legend is nothing if not practical.
The garage, with washing machine and dryer, acts as a mud room that was badly needed until just a few months ago when the concrete driveway was finally laid.
Slater and his wife Nicole, 39, have spent the five years since his retirement from the Melbourne Storm, where he set the club record for the most ever tries and played in seven NRL grand finals, building their dream home.
“When we bought these 20 acres (8ha) there was nothing here. No services just rolling hills,” Slater says.
“It was a blank canvas. We would come out here and sit on the roof of the car and picture the view from the living room.”
Today that view with double height floor to ceiling windows is sensational, with paddocks for the horses dropping away from the edge of the infinity pool to green hills and orchards beyond. It is just 40km southeast of Melbourne but is pure country.
“We can actually see the city from part of the block but if we wanted to look at the city we could have just gone onto the rooftop of our home in Richmond,” Slater says.
The couple, childhood sweethearts who met at pony club in Queensland, have always wanted to give their children Tyla, 15, and Jake, 13, a country upbringing like their own.
They have built the house with a striking curved concrete entrance, that covers a turning circle for cars, stables, sheds and outbuildings.
“Every single one of those rocks,” Slater says, pointing to giant sandstone boulders lining the drive, “was put there by my uncle and I. He came down from Redcliffe in Queensland for four weeks and we hired excavators and backhoes and put them in.”
The latest building is a gallery for Nicole’s paintings. She is a self-taught artist and her giant canvases of horses, up to 2m-tall and 3m-wide, now command prices north of $60,000.
She once would painstakingly use a single-haired brush to layer on the texture of the horse’s coat until she adapted a makeup brush to paint 20 hairs at a time. Da Vinci brushes is so impressed, it is bringing out a line of brushes named after her.
The gallery allows her to show her paintings without revealing inside the family home. It has also allowed Slater to finally move from the kitchen bench to a soundproofed office perfect for his live television crosses and podcasts.
“It is like the doghouse, but a nice one,” says Nicole.
“We both work from home so it is important that we keep the separation, then when we are at home, we can be at home.”
The move from the kitchen bench is a relief for Slater who found his work constantly interrupted by Nicole wanting to have a chat.
“It drove me nuts,” he laughs.
Outside they have a menagerie of animals, including an eastern grey parrot called Lewy who is a perfect mimic and loves to whistle the Melbourne Storm chant, two sheep, two goats, two dogs and of course the horses.
“Watch the sheep,” warns Slater as we walk through a paddock to Nicole’s painting studio. “The kids have taught them to headbutt.”
Outside the studio are the latest additions, two miniature donkeys that cost $9000 and are Nicole’s great joy. There was no argument about getting them, she says, “because he owed me”.
No good deed goes unpunished. In a moment of serendipity the kids and Slater were away and Nicole had the house to herself. She had a rare moment of self-indulgence planned out.
“One hour into it there was a knock on the door and a man stood there with a newborn lamb. He handed it to me and said ‘Billy has organised this for you. I am pretty sure it’s hungry’,” Nicole says.
“I was in a panic, I had to get colostrum and then spent the worst two days trying to get the lamb to latch on and take the food. It wouldn’t latch on and I thought it was going to die.”
Slater arrived home to find his wife exhausted and distraught. “He took the lamb and colostrum off me and two minutes later the lamb latched on. ‘You’ve just got to know what you’re doing darl,’ he said. I could have killed him,” Nicole laughs.
Slater makes things look easy but behind his triumphs lay enormous hard work.
His old Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy has explained that “the main secret to his success” in his playing days was the sheer grind Slater put in off the pitch.
“The amount of work he puts in to stay in shape, physical condition, to maintain his speed, but also the amount of work he puts in on video – on himself, our team, the opposition is quite incredible,” Bellamy has said.
Clearly that attitude has paid off with Slater’s success with the Queensland State of Origin team, which he has just signed up to coach for another three years.
“There is always pressure but there is no more pressure now than there was two years ago,” Slater says of his signing.
“I am there because it is important to me. Rugby league has been a big part of my life for my whole life and I am enjoying helping this group of players fulfil their Queensland dream.”
That job has ruled out any speculation of him taking a job coaching in the NRL – at least for the time being.
“I don’t see myself as an NRL coach, but then again I didn’t see myself coaching Queensland either,” he says.
So why does he leave his idyllic life to go back into the high-pressure cauldron of State of Origin?
“I ask myself that question,” Slater says.
“The real answer is because it means something to me. This team has been my inspiration ever since I can remember. I was inspired by the jersey, the players in the jersey, and then I got the opportunity to become one of those players and I now get the opportunity and honour to help these guys be the inspiration for our state.”
His coaching takes inspiration from Bellamy and many other people who are not in the public eye, but at its heart is self confidence.
“I have got this confidence in myself that I am going to do it my way,” Slater says. “I am going to learn from the experience of other people but at the end of the day your own voice has got to be the loudest in your head.”
He is happy dividing his time, as he has for most of his life, between rugby league and horses. Slater actually gave up playing in his late teens to become a trackwork rider for legendary trainer Gai Waterhouse.
“I feel very fortunate that I had my two passions pushed before me at a very young age,” he says.
“Rugby league since I was three and horses from 10 when I would go with my grandfather and go out trail riding. It has been rugby league for a big portion and horses for a big portion.
“Everyone has a certain amount of time on this earth and you get to choose how you spend it. Of course sometimes you have to sacrifice to get where you are going.”
He now has two horses in foal on his farm and two yearlings to sell at the Magic Millions Yearling Sale on the Gold Coast in January. He will be there anyway as an ambassador for the event, and he will play in the polo on the Sunday before the sales begin.
Slater and Nicole, who has been commissioned to paint for the event, have joined a select group of ambassadors carefully curated for their relevance and skills by Magic Millions co-owners Katie Page and Gerry Harvey.
They include the King Charles’s niece Zara Tindall and her husband Mike, Argentinian polo star Nacho Figueras and his model wife Delfina Blaquier and movie star and showjumper Elsa Pataky, Spanish wife of Aussie Thor actor Chris Hemsworth.
“Magic Millions feels like a part of us now. We are very fortunate to be involved in it and to be involved with some very important people, starting with Katie and Gerry,” Slater says. “It is all about the people. You get the right people and the rest is easy and that’s what Katie and Gerry have done. The people in each position are all good people. There is a lot of respect.”
However, Slater is not content to just turn up and ride around the polo field once a year. He wants to win. He and Nicole visited Nacho and Delfina at their polo property outside Buenos Aires straight after the State of Origin.
“It is no wonder they have the best polo players in the world because everything they do over there is about polo,” says Slater, who bought those gleaming leather polo boots while he was there.
“I play a few chukkas now to get ready,” he says casually, disguising the work he is putting in behind the scenes on borrowed polo pony Tulip to get ready for the January showdown with firm friend Nacho in Queensland.
Looking around the property he and Nicole have shaped into their dream, Slater allows himself a quiet smile.
“This is home and Queensland is home,” he says. “This is what we love doing, family, horses and riding. I don’t think we will ever move.”
It is a sweet spot.
“I am happy with where I am. I don’t envision any changes – you could do worse things than live in the now.”
2024
The Star
Gold Coast
Magic Millions Carnival
Runs from January 3 to 17
January 7
Pacific Fair Magic Millions Polo and Showjumping
January 9
The Star Gold Coast Magic Millions Barrier Draw
January 9-16
Magic Millions Gold Coast Yearling Sale
January 13
The Star Gold Coast Magic Millions Raceday
magicmillionspoloandshowjumping.com.au
magicmillions.com.au
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