Who’s the boss? Poppy Burgess
RUGBY league star Sam Burgess and wife Phoebe pose for their first ever photo shoot as a family with daughter Poppy.
Stellar
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RUGBY league star Sam Burgess is in trouble again. And not only because he just received his second suspension in four weeks for dangerous on-field play. This time, it’s his one-year-old daughter Poppy who has him in her crosshairs, demanding the South Sydney Rabbitohs enforcer turn his imposing 1.96m frame towards her, rather than keep his focus on wife Phoebe.
The trio is in the middle of a photo shoot for Stellar — their first as a family. And as the 29-year-old journalist and new mum finally has a chance to catch her breath amid the chaos her active toddler daughter is wreaking in the studio, she admits, “Poppy holds the floor in our house, too, especially with Sam. From the minute he held his daughter, this amazing softness came over him. Which is why it’s such a contradiction to see people call him a thug, or grubby.”
A lot has changed for Sam and Phoebe Burgess since their “Pop” entered the world in January 2017. Phoebe believes fatherhood has softened one of rugby league’s toughest men, the bloke who famously fractured his eye socket in the opening minutes of the 2014 NRL Grand Final, yet still led his team to victory. “The moment he had a daughter, he had this amazing new appreciation for the other 50 per cent of the population,” she tells Stellar. “He doesn’t skirt his responsibilities as a father; he never takes off and goes out with the boys instead of being a dad. He always makes the right choice. Which I’ve never bullied him to do! He’s just a good man. And it’s sexy.”
Sam, meanwhile, believes motherhood has made his wife of more than two years far stronger — and it goes beyond having watched her give birth. “I could never imagine doing that,” says Burgess, 29, the second of four UK-born brothers who all play rugby league. “I found it beautiful she would sacrifice that pain for our family.”
There is also, he points out, the small matter of sleep deprivation, a natural side effect of raising a child they both say is not the type to sit quietly nursing a babycino at their local cafe. “Sleep deprivation is the hardest thing you can do,” he says. “We do it in training camps to help make us stronger and tougher, and it’s torture. But that’s normal for many mums. I’ve always known Phoebe was resilient. Now it’s increased — tenfold.”
Where free weeknights were once spent heading to the movies or out to dinner, or simply dissecting the weekend’s win or defeat, now the two focus on their girl. “Before becoming parents our lives were so interlinked,” says Sam. “And once the baby comes along, a lot of Mum’s love and energy goes to the baby.” Phoebe jumps in with a response: “Parenting is an amazing challenge to put your marriage through. I think a lot of people try to fight the change motherhood brings, but it’s a good change. It’s opened my eyes up to this whole new community, a whole new way of seeing the world I didn’t have before.” And, she points out, “I still am at most games, or at least all the ones in Sydney... but now I just watch it [with] one hand feeding a toddler, or a finger up my nose.”
To this day, Phoebe says, Poppy (whose name was inspired by the moment an app told her parents their unborn baby was, at one point, no larger than a poppy seed) does not sleep through the night. But her mother long ago stopped worrying about when — or if — it would happen.
“I figured out for myself really early on you can never compare yourself to anyone else,” Phoebe says. “Your successes might be their challenges — and vice versa.” Adds Sam, “It’s every bit challenging and every bit enjoyable. It’s amazing the amount of love you can have for a little thing. And it grows every day. I might say today, ‘I can’t love her any more.’ And then tomorrow I will love her more.”
Which is why, despite their very public profile, they have been happily sharing shots of Poppy on their social-media feeds for months. Parenting in the public eye is, admits Sam, not without its challenges. “There will always be ‘police’ on social media who see something and go, ‘They shouldn’t be doing that.’ But we are doing the best we can at being parents for the first time. We are enjoying it and having fun along the way.”
Phoebe says she considered not sharing photos of Poppy, but quickly changed her mind. “We are not Hollywood,” she says. “We don’t think we are something we are not. We are two average people and Sam does something he loves that has propelled us into the spotlight, for want of a better word. We aren’t Oscar-winning actors, we don’t have the world looking at us. We are painfully normal and we want to celebrate our child — like most parents.”
Still, says the recently announced Bobbi Brown ambassador, she’d be happy if her daughter stayed off the socials until age 25. Because she is, quite simply, a mum who can’t help wanting to preserve her firstborn’s innocence for as long as she can.
“No-one has told her who she needs to be,” Phoebe insists. “I look up to her because she’s so free and has no inhibitions. There is nothing stopping her from being exactly who she is.
“She’s rough and tumble like her dad. She’s not a princess, even though she gets called Princess Poppy. She’s not a girly girl. She might be one day; she’s not now! But I love the fact she’s deciding.” As Sam adds, with a quip: “Look at her parents — they are not quiet and chilled.”