Phoebe Burgess: ‘We’re going to have a competitive child’
SHE is soon due to give birth to her first child, but media personality Phoebe Burgess isn’t afraid to take on husband and rugby league star Sam — or his brothers.
Stellar
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PHOEBE Burgess takes great delight in recalling a recent sporting victory. While she’s married to South Sydney Rabbitohs forward Sam Burgess and is used to cheering him on to success, this time the triumph was all hers. “We were at a friend’s farm the other day and we were playing tennis. Everyone was playing and I was like, bugger it,” says Phoebe, adding that due to a nagging back injury, she isn’t supposed to play.
“I picked up a racquet and I smoked all the Burgess boys; it felt so good,” she recalls with a wicked chuckle.
Sam’s recollection of the tennis games played with his brothers George, Tom and Luke — also professional NRL players — is slightly different. “Baby brain is kicking in because that’s not what happened,” he jokes. “Phoebe is extremely competitive and I’m exactly the same. We get on like a house on fire, except when there’s sport involved and we’re competing against each other. Me and my brothers were hitting a few balls, and she could hit the ball better than any of us. She was about six months pregnant at the time — she’s a bit of an athlete.”
It’s been a whirlwind 12 months for the couple, who got married on December 28 last year. About to celebrate their first wedding anniversary, Phoebe is also now expecting their first baby, due at the end of next month. And all signs point to their child inheriting the ambitious streak of both parents. “We’re going to have a cheeky and competitive child,” says Phoebe. “It could be a bit of a phenomenon.”
While Sam professes to being reluctant to talk about his private life, when it comes to his wife, he can’t help but speak in glowing terms. “Phoebe is an amazing woman,” he tells Stellar. “All I’ve been is a support for her and the way that she’s dealt with pregnancy has been fantastic, as all women do, I’m sure. It’s hard for me to comment because I’m a male, but what women go through is absolutely amazing.
“I’ve really enjoyed being her support through this because she is a huge support for me in my career. She’s really a joy to be around — 95 per cent of the time,” he adds with a laugh.
Phoebe, a journalist with a regular segment on the Nine Network’s Today show, has also recently turned her hand to fashion design, having launched activewear business Love Your Form with friend and pilates instructor Kirsten King. After first meeting her now husband in 2014, she has been thrust into the spotlight through her relationship with the NRL player, but Sam says she’s taken the scrutiny in her stride.
“I’ve probably thrown her into some tricky situations with work and everything but she’s just dealt with it,” he says. “She hasn’t made a fuss, she’s gone out and made things happen.”
Her resilience is no accident. Phoebe admits she tried to prepare herself for the media and public interest in her relationship from early on. After the pair met at an Avicii concert in Sydney back in January 2014, she made the decision to keep their relationship under the radar for several months. It wasn’t until September that year, after her then-boyfriend made the decision to move to the UK to play rugby, that reports started to surface that he would be joined by Phoebe.
She says it was a tricky adjustment to become the subject of public attention as a duo, not least because her career as an entertainment journalist in magazines and TV meant she was used to asking the questions rather than answering them.
“When the stories started coming out, it was a big deal,” she says. “It felt like a big deal because we kept our relationship completely private and completely secret for eight months.
“That was a lot from my side of things, because I just wanted to be damn sure [about the relationship]. I know that once you go into it, that’s a tag that you’ll have for a very long time; you’ve been the ex-girlfriend of someone like Sam.
“I thought: I don’t want to be collateral damage. I want to see if this is something real with this guy before everyone knows about it.”
Happily, the couple’s relationship flourished. They moved to the UK for a year and during that time got engaged.
It was when they married, at Phoebe’s family home in Bowral last year, that interest in their relationship intensified. Despite it being a celebration among close friends and family, paparazzi managed to take photos of the wedding party, which were then widely published. But Phoebe is determined to remain philosophical about the intrusion into her personal life.
“You have to accept that a lot of people are interested in Sam, and they are going to be interested in his private life,” she says. “I’ve tried to be pragmatic about it, but there are days when it is awful.
“We haven’t ever sold a piece of our relationship. We didn’t sell our wedding, we released photos. That was the advice we were given to keep everyone away, but it still ended up a bit of a circus.
“We try to do our work and we happily share a lot of it. But then there’s the line where we don’t sell it, so some of the intrusiveness isn’t warranted, I don’t think.”
Phoebe says being chased by paparazzi while driving and having photos published that have been surreptitiously taken while she is out and about can be overwhelming, but adds Sam and her family have helped her see the lighter side.
“I was at the beach with my sister and I’d been photographed there,” she says, “so the first images that came out of my baby bump were of me sitting there on the beach smashing a Bubble O’Bill [ice-cream]. Boobs on bump, legs wide open and it wasn’t flattering. I went home and I felt humiliated.
“But then I spoke to my family and Sam and we all laughed about it. If my family and myself are proud of who I am, and my standards, and how I go about life then that’s pretty much all that matters.”
What’s obvious too, is that she and Sam are both incredibly excited about becoming parents, and happy to share their joy.
“From the moment Sam and I met, we clicked over family — that’s been the common thread,” she says. “The coolest thing is Sam has so many dreams and things that he would love to accomplish, and I do as well, but this is one that we’re doing together. This is our project and we’re going to build an amazing family.”
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