Playing in the NRL was not my plan: Campbell-Gillard
HAD you told Reagan Campbell-Gillard five years ago that he’d be a starting first grade prop at Penrith, he wouldn’t have believed you.
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HAD you told Reagan Campbell-Gillard five years ago that he’d be a starting first grade prop at Penrith, he wouldn’t have believed you.
The 23-year-old, who grew up in Mt Druitt, has been one of the few shining lights in a difficult season for the Panthers.
Campbell-Gillard decided early on that he didn’t have what it took to be a professional footballer, so he quit the Rooty Hill Dragons just a few seasons after debuting for the under-8s.
“I wanted to be a back-rower. I thought I had the speed and agility, but I found out pretty quickly that I didn’t. I was always a tall kid, but the Polynesian kids were still a lot bigger than me,” Campbell-Gillard said.
“I went through that phase where I didn’t want to play because they were too big, so I picked another sport.”
And for the next eight years, the future representative rugby league player spent time on the soccer pitches and hockey fields.
Yep, eight years without taking a hit-up.
Campbell-Gillard decided to have one last crack at league when a mate asked him to come and play for the Windsor Wolves because their under-17 side was short on props.
His lengthy stint out of the game didn’t do him any harm though, and the Panthers quickly signed him up after a scout saw him play.
Even then he didn’t think he was good enough.
“I never had goals or dreams to play in the NRL. This definitely wasn’t a plan,” he said.
“If nothing happened in the under-17s, I was going to join the army.”
He admitted there wasn’t a single moment where he thought he’d made it as a professional player.
“It only hit me in my first year of reserve grade,” he said. “I got a lot of confidence and Ivan (Cleary, then the club’s NRL coach) told me what he thought and from that moment, I believed I could do it.
“I was sweating bullets every week before the team list came out to see if I was going to be in the team and to this day, I can’t believe I’m playing professional rugby league. I cherish every moment.”
Penrith general manager Phil Gould was happy Campbell-Gillard made a return to rugby league.
“Reagan is such a wonderful person and obviously a very talented footballer. He is a real success story,” Gould said.
“Reagan is a product of our junior league and elite development programs at Panthers. He has worked extremely hard to realise his dreams.”
Campbell-Gillard, who now lives in St Clair, said rugby league in his part of town was very tough, but he was proud to see it still going strong.
“There are a lot of suburbs that make up Mt Druitt, and rugby league is massive there. You see it on Saturday afternoons at the footy parks. There’s plenty of passion,” he said.
Campbell-Gillard has arguably been Penrith’s best forward this season, and a few good judges have said he’s a smoky for the NSW Origin team this year.
In 2017, he’s running for more than 115m a game and has made just one error in
10 matches.
Last week against the Warriors, he made 142m to go with his 139m the week before against Brisbane.
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While he’s not thinking about a possible Blues jersey, he said the fact critics rated him had lifted his confidence.
“I haven’t read into it too much, but it is a confidence booster when you hear things like that, but Penrith comes first,” he said.
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