NRL 2021: Gold Coast Titans’ Jarrod Wallace ready for Mudgee return, Manly Sea Eagles clash
After almost 20 years, former Mudgee Dragon Jarrod Wallace is ready for a rugby league homecoming when he returns to Central West NSW to take on Manly.
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First punch Jarrod Wallace threw in bush footy against men, he was 16.
The age he made his top-grade debut.
With this Gold Coast Titan still a schoolboy back then, he raced headlong into a dusty scrum brawl orchestrated by his prop. A fella, coincidentally, who doubled as his old man.
“But that was a while ago now,” dad Craig Wallace laughs when tracked down at home on the Gold Coast this week. “Back when you could have some fun in scrums”.
So you were both being in there swinging?
“Oh, 100 per cent,” he says. “I remember emerging from the scrum, then ripping in. Which is when I felt this frame come right over the top of me ... and there was Jarrod.”
As far as bush footy yarns go, few come better than the Wallace clan.
With old man Craig having not simply played first grade with all three sons Jarrod, Cooper and Logan, but thrown down alongside the oldest, won a premiership with his middle son and even now, aged 49, remaining in shape for that day, his kids insist, when they all play together.
Importantly, too, it’s a Mudgee story.
That same bush town where on Saturday afternoon against Manly, Jarrod Wallace returns for a homecoming almost 20 years in the making.
Now in his 10th NRL season, Wallace is part of a Gold Coast pack that is quickly becoming the talk of the NRL.
Yet back in the early 2000s he was a Mudgee Dragon — a Queenslander raised on the NSW bush footy circuit. And now he’s preparing for his homecoming.
Saturday’s clash may officially be a Sea Eagles home game, scores of locals will be turning out to cheer this 29-year-old Titan whose surname is forever linked to one of the town’s greatest footballing eras. A period of success Jarrod cheered himself from the sidelines as Mudgee ball boy.
That, and the young prop who won his own Under-12 premiership alongside another fella you may know, Canterbury captain Josh Jackson.
Which is some story itself.
Especially when recalling how these two little Dragons would eventually square off on rugby league’s biggest stage in the 2017 State of Origin series — with Wallace making his first of what has since been seven appearances for Queensland.
But just as importantly is the old prop he threw that first punch for.
A regular member of the NSW Country side, Craig Wallace was a bush footy star back when the phrase really meant something
Starting out with Runaway Bay aged four, he would play 28 straight years with his beloved Seagulls before, in 2002, “making a change” and heading bush with wife Sharon and their four children. First, two years with Mudgee.
Then from there, five more seasons with Sawtell on the NSW North Coast, where Jarrod would eventually debut in a Panthers first-grade side captain-coached by dad.
Which is why Saturday’s return means so much for this Titans prop.
With Wallace explaining how, despite being a bona fide Queenslander, so much of his success comes from a grounding in country NSW.
A journey, too, which started with his entire family sharing a Mudgee motel room for eight weeks.
“So one minute we’re living at Runaway Bay,” he says. “Then the next, squeezed into this little hotel room in the middle of nowhere.
“It’s little wonder dad went bald soon after.”
To which dad says what?
“It was challenging,” he laughs. “Especially for Sharon, who was stuck in that motel with the kids while I was off working and training.
“After a couple of weeks, she nearly packed up.
“But eventually we stuck it out, got a home, and enjoyed one of the best decisions our family has ever made.”
Apart from leading Mudgee to a premiership in his first season, scoring two tries on Grand Final Day to beat Orange CYMS 28-24, Wallace snr would also win Group 10 Player of the Year.
Then next winter, he came within a bee’s appendage of securing a double too — scoring again in a second decider Mudgee lost on the full-time siren.
Around the same time, little Jarrod was also winning premierships for the Dragons, with League Central explaining this week how one local we spoke with recounts him running 80m to score in the U/12s grand final.
“Did I?” Wallace laughs. “I can’t remember, but if someone in Mudgee is saying it I’ll take it.
“Actually, you may as well put in that I ran the full 100.”
Should we say you were a gun playmaker, too?
“I’d like to tell you I was a halfback with a great step,” he laughs. “But no, I was the prop.
“No faster than I am now.”
Quizzed on playing alongside Jackson, who also debuted in the 2012 NRL season, he says: “No different to today.
“Didn’t talk much, but champion player.
“And to think two kids from Mudgee U12s would oppose each other in Origin, that’s pretty awesome.
“But when you ask about my best footy memories from Mudgee, they really are about dad.
“Being the ball boy for those grand finals, seeing dad score tries, that’s what I remember most.”
Today, and after years coaching senior sides on the Gold Coast, Craig Wallace now devotes his time to the Titans Physical Disability Rugby League.
In three years, helping grow the organisation from one team to five.
“And to see these guys getting to play something they love, after thinking for so long it was impossible — amazing,” he says.
Elsewhere, the old Mudgee favourite is renovating a house, attending Titans game and, yep, still staying in shape as requested by his boys.
“But for all of us to play together, I’ll be over 50 by then,” he laughs. “So who knows?
“They’ve just told me to keep training.”
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