Beer and a big appetite helped Andrew Fifita's rise from a skinny winger to 116kg destroyer

BEER, how can anyone stay mad at you? Blues debutant Andrew Fifita has revealed the amber fluid contributed to his development into a 116kg behemoth.

BEER, how can anyone stay mad at you?

You receive such a bad rap, you've brought down many a player, become the unhappy companion of more than one coach, but if not for you NSW may never have had a rampaging Andrew Fifita coming off the bench for Origin I.

Fresh from his indestructible performance against Souths on Monday night, the Sharks juggernaut yesterday joined the Blues squad and then set about explaining how he struggled for most of his teenage years to put on weight.

This is particularly strange when you consider the manner in which he threw his daunting 194cm, 116kg frame at the Rabbitohs in his side's 14-12 win at Sharks Stadium.

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For this, Laurie Daley can thank magnificent beer for the transformation.

"I struggled so hard to put weight on," Fifita, 23, said. "When I moved down to Griffith as a teenager, and I was living with my uncles, I started drinking and eating whatever I wanted, and that's where the weight was put on."

So beer turned your career around? Is that what you're suggesting?

"You can't be writing that," he laughed. "Yeah, it helped put on the weight. I remember when I came to the Tigers I weighed 123kg and after that pre-season I shed all the weight and I was 103kg. Then I started doing gym work and here I am today."

Indeed you are.

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If there had been any doubts about Fifita's value to the Blues, they were partly dismissed against Souths when he handed in the best numbers from a bench player in recent memory: 24 runs for 216m, as well as 42 tackles in a tick under 70 minutes.

Andrew Fifita

And all this with the knowledge that the smallest of injuries could halt him from making his Origin debut.

"I sat down and talked to my missus before the game and said, 'I don't know how to do this'," Fifita said. "I didn't have anyone around to get some advice off them. Then Flanno (Sharks coach Shane Flanagan) had a word to me and said to put it to the back of my mind. I pretended I wasn't playing Origin next week.

"I felt my knee out there, and I was thinking should I or should I not play on. Then my neck tightened right up. But if injury occurred, it occurred."

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The potential was always in Andrew Fifita. Only now, since moving to the Sharks, has he found it.

As a teenager growing up in Blacktown, he and twin brother David moved to Griffith where there were less temptations. They were becoming too wild away from footy, and a darker path beckoned.

You'd never think it now - especially with the impact role he's about to play for the Blues - but he struggled to edge the scales beyond 70kg.

In 2006, Arthur Beetson rejected the idea of signing him to the Roosters when Fifita was a lightweight winger.

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Asked why he has such a big engine now, he offers this: "Growing up as a skinny little kid, I reckon. Me and my brother had a lot of competition being twins. I remember doing cross-country runs. I felt like I could run for days. It's all mental, I guess. Just put it in your head that you're not tired."

It's not the only resurrection he's made, of course.

When Tim Sheens told him in 2011 he was being moved on so the Tigers could accommodate the arrival of Adam Blair, Fifita was shunted to NSW Cup.

"I thought there was no more first grade for me," he said at the time.

Now the not-so-little fella is about to play Origin. Thank you, beer.