Darius Boyd retirement: Why the Broncos champ deserves more credit for his NRL career

Darius Boyd has approached the end of his career with a dignified air that others would battle to maintain while under such an intense spotlight – and it’s a shining mark of the Broncos great’s character, writes Robert Craddock.

Darius Boyd cried at Matt Gillett’s retirement announcement – but he didn’t cry at his own.

He thought he would.

The plan was to have his wife Kayla sitting out of his eyeline so that the very sight of her did not move him to tears.

But she twisted the plot by sitting in the front row straight in front of him.

Initially Boyd was concerned that would be the end of him but – quick thinker that he has always been – he formulated a plan to look over her head.

But when he mentioned Kayla in his speech he looked up at her, smiled and knew from that point there was no chance he would break down.

Darius Boyd with wife Kayla and children Willow, 4, and Romi, 5 months. Picture: AAP Image/Darren England

A slightly quivering bottom lip was the closest he came to losing control but the entire episode said a lot about the impressively placid mental state Boyd is in for the last season of his career.

One of the reasons why Boyd was so emotionally settled at his last press conference is that he is approaching his final season with the same sort of serenity Joe Frazier once had before a world heavyweight bout.

“If I go down there will be no excuses – I have done all I can,’’ Frazier said.

“There was nothing left to do’’.

Boyd’s has been an under-rated career. People struggle to call him a modern day great but he is.

By the time walks off a rugby league field for the last time this season he will have played more first grade games than Billy Slater and Johnathan Thurston and all bar about 10 players in the game’s history.

Darius Boyd walks into the press conference. Picture: AAP Image/Darren England

His career – 23 Tests, 28 Origins and 321 club games – is among the game’s most distinguished yet there is no stampede to have a statue for him which others have got with similar records.

Boyd never quite got the credit he deserved as player, initially because the fans never felt they knew him well enough to throw their loving arms around him.

Fans respected and admired rather than loved him.

His qualities – slickness, reliability and professionalism down to the point where he weighed himself every day – were admirable but they did not pluck your heart from your chest.

Boyd became a try-scoring machine for the Maroons. Picture: Brett Costello

He had an innate ability to read the game and when you close your eyes and picture some of his best moments with the Broncos it is often that old Wayne Bennett move which has had more airings than a Simpsons episode where Boyd chimed in from fullback off a pass from five-eighth thrown behind two decoy runners.

Raised by his grandmother, Boyd started his career being understandably suspicious about everyone and everything and followed Wayne Bennett through three clubs because Bennett was the father he never had.

But when Bennett left the Broncos for the Rabbitohs and Boyd stayed in Brisbane it was a sign that the boy had become not simply a man but his own man.

Darius Boyd chats with coach Wayne Bennett during Dragons training session in 2009.

Once so paranoid about criticism, he has become the most transformed character in the game.

Each week last season he copped the sort of abuse on social media normally reserved for people who start fires yet it bounced off his crocodile skin because he simply refused to read it.

For all of his success as a player Boyd’s most important contribution to the Broncos may yet come post retirement when he helps players through the mental challenges which so tested him as a player in his younger years.

Once such a tortured private soul, he now speaks openly and most impressively about the mental health issues in sport and life.

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All the goodwill circulating after his announcement could not mask the fact that his final season could be one of the most testing of his career and he may not even be in first grade by the end of of it.

His leadership qualities and quick decision making count heavily in a team of kids who turn to him on-field guidance.

But every player must sing for his supper on ruthless stat sheets which count tackles and metres made and Boyd’ is not what he was.

It is a great challenge but if he fails there will be no tears.

Like Joe Frazier, he has done his best and there is nothing left to do.