Chris Heighington ready to let loose again after NRL grand final
HE gave the loosest interview in NRL grand final history, dropping more f-bombs than Scarface. And Chris Heighington is ready to let it all hang out again.
NRL
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IF last time was anything to go by, Chris Heighington will make for the best post-match interview once the dust settles on Sunday’s grand final.
The last time he was here, as a 22-year old with the fairytale Wests Tigers side of 2005, Heighington was one of a string of newly crowned premiers who let fly after the win over the Cowboys.
Matty Johns was ducking around asking the young tyros how it felt to scale the NRL mountain, and the boys let loose. Pat Richards, Anthony Laffranchi and Ben Galea all dropped an f-bomb or two, but Heighington went next level
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“Mate, it’s f***ing awesome mate!” he said to Johns.
“You don’t know how to f***ing ... well, there’s no words for it Matty!
“It’s f***ing unbelievable. You’d die for these blokes, friends for life Matty, friends for life.”
You could feel poor old Johns’ exasperation, but it was hard to scold Heighington. After all, if you can’t shoot from the hip after winning a grand final, when can you do it?
Now a grizzled, 34-year old veteran, Heighington is preparing for his second decider, a team and a club that is a world away from the freewheeling Tigers and he says he can’t guarantee there won’t be a second blue interview.
“I can’t guarantee what I’m going to say because I’ll be one happy guy.
“Just get the win and we’ll see what happens.
“I didn’t know I was swearing at the time. I just exploded when we won.
“To my credit, I felt like Matty Johns was one of my friends from watching him on TV and that, so I‘ll blame Matty Johns.”
Heighington has travelled a long road since that night 11 years ago. He was one of the Tigers’ most consistent performers during their up and down post-premiership years and was left heartbroken when he was moved him on in 2012.
It’s taken a switch of clubs and a change of playing style to get him to his second grand final and Heighington admits he took things for granted last time.
“I was a young kid from the Central Coast, three years in, walking into a GF and thinking ‘this happens all the time’,” he said.
“I’m a bit older but I still act like the oldest kid in the team. Back in ’05 I was a young kid and I had really good senior players.
“I’m one of the senior players here and what I learned off the senior players in ’05 I’m trying to bring it to the table for our younger kids.
“In saying that, they don’t need to be taught much. They’ve got this aura and confidence about them where you’ve just got to let them go at times.”
Another of those old campaigners is Luke Lewis, who also won a title way back when.
Lewis was even younger than Heighington when he lined up on the wing for the Panthers in their golden year of 2003.
He was barely 20 when Penrith beat the Roosters 18-6 on a wet night at Telstra Stadium to claim their second title and like Heighington, he says he took it for granted.
“When I came through I played in a Harold Matthews grand final, SG Ball grand finals,” Lewis said.
“We played in a lot of big games when we were kids, me and (Luke) Rooney and Shane Rodney and Joel Clinton and Trent Waterhouse, we came into the team and two years later we were in a grand final.
“We thought ‘how good was this’. The next year we were in a prelim final and we only just missed out on going to the grand final again.
“We just thought it was going to happen from there, ‘we’ll get another one, we’ll get another opportunity, we’ll get another chance’ and it just never seemed to come.
“You get to the semis and you get knocked out. You get to the semis and you have injuries.
“A lot of little things have to go your way to get here.”
The 33-year old would have been forgiven for thinking the chances of another grand final had passed him by — after all, this was just the second time since 2004 he’d made to even a prelim final.
“I went to the grand final last year and I was sitting there in a suit,” Lewis said.
“Me and Gal were saying ‘I’d love just to run out there. I wish it was us running out there instead of sitting here in a suit doing suite visits’.
“Now we’re here. We don’t need to wear the suits.”
As one of only four grand final winners in this Sharks side, Lewis said he had urged his younger teammates to enjoy the week for what it was and not treat the extra responsibilities as a burden.
“Do everything with a smile and enjoy it,” he said.
“Weeks like this don’t come around very often and if you’re lucky enough to enjoy a grand final week, you (should) enjoy it.
“If things go south, you just need to keep taking a forward step.”
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