How Melbourne Storm coach Craig Bellamy made an unlikely NRL hero of history teacher Chris Lewis

High school teacher Chris Lewis spent 10 years trying to play one NRL game. It looked a bridge too far until he caught the eye of the competition’s best coach.

The only time Chris Lewis never fought his own way out of a problem, he was being held underwater in a swollen river.

Trapped, and drowning, among the submerged branches of an old fallen tree. Which was nothing good.

Nor what the youngster was imagining minutes earlier when, after heavy rain, he decided to canoe down that same stretch of waterway twisting through four kilometres of his family’s cattle property near Inverell.

Along for the ride too, came older brothers Matt and Mark.

“Growing up, we’d always wanted to get canoes in that river when it was high,” Lewis recalls. “Just to see how fast we’d go.”

Only problem? It was how fast they went.

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“Then, we hit rapids,” Lewis cackles, recalling a whitewater so menacing it not only tipped his canoe but then held him underwater, helpless.

Submerged and pinned, he says, “between my canoe and that tree”.

At which point, fearlessly, eldest brother Matt dived into the drink.

“Saved my life,” Lewis says.

Which undeniably, is some yarn.

Although not the one defining this son of a Wagyu cattle farmer and grandson of a shearer.

A now Melbourne Storm backrower who for so much of his life has been trapped and drowning — even if only figuratively — and every time fought his own way out.

Certainly Craig Bellamy gets it. With the reigning NRL premiership coach seeing in this 29-year-old what he once recognised in Bryan Norrie, Jaiman Lowe, Brett Finch, Clint Newton, Brenko Lee, Cheyse Blair, Blake Green, Adam Woolnough and … well, you get it, right?

Chris Lewis making a run in his 2020 debut against South Sydney. Picture: Michael Klein

Every time Bellamy goes and wins an NRL premiership — asterisk or otherwise — he gets there with at least one footballer resurrected like a phoenix from the ashes.

Now this year, the honour belongs to a history teacher raised in the northern NSW village of Ashford, population 600.

A fella working out of Caloundra State High just over 18 months ago — specifically, preparing to mark a pile of Year 9 papers on World War I — when a call came on behalf of the Storm coach.

It made no sense. Not when aged 27, Lewis had already been punted by two NRL clubs — including Melbourne — without ever playing a game. Worse, he boasted a pair of ACL surgeries, reconstructed shoulder, even a dodgy ankle.

Indeed, so forgotten had this now ageing Sunshine Coast Falcons backrower become, his own manager had stopped spruiking to clubs on his behalf.

“Not that I knew,” Lewis laughs. “But apparently he’d decided I wasn’t worth the time.”

So as for what Bellamy now saw that the scouts, rival coaches, even his own manager missed?

“Maybe it’s my beautiful blue eyes and quick wit,” the country boy cackles.

Anything else?

“Well, if you come to play in Melbourne,” he says, “you need the right attitude.

“And I believe I have that.

“Off the field, I don’t make any work for the coach.

“I’m sensible. I’ve worked a job. I know how to show up and do what’s asked of me.”

Then, after a short pause, he adds: “Craig Bellamy won’t put time in if you’re a dickhead. So just reword that however you need to.”

But why? Already, it’s bang on.

Melbourne’s Chris Lewis and Cameron Smith celebrate after a game. Picture: Michael Klein

Especially when recognising the Chris Lewis story, it doesn’t start with that late 2019 phone call from Storm, nor even his being saved from a swollen river.

No, it begins at age five; with a little boy so enamoured by rugby league he wore out his first pair of boots before even playing a game.

“Our house, it had a large concrete verandah around it,” Lewis recalls. “And after mum bought my boots, I ran so many laps I wore the studs off before playing.

“So mum, she had to go buy another pair.

“I guess I’ve just always loved rugby league for what it is.”

Yet it’s one thing for a fella to love rugby league — and something else entirely to have the game love you back.

A truth Lewis has come to know intimately since finishing Year 12, when he packed up for Wollongong and all the promise of an Illawarra Steelers SG Ball contract.

“Yet for the ensuing 10 years,” he says, “it’s felt like the only person who ever thought I’d make it is me.”

Over the next five years, Lewis would to play just two games with Dragons Under 20s — “an illustrious career,” he laughs — while also undergoing four major surgeries, including two ACLs in as many winters.

Elsewhere, his shoulder dislocated while holding a tackle pad at training. Then an ankle required reconstruction.

All up, a run so bad Lewis eventually had to ask parents Mick and Pauleen, his greatest and most unwavering of supporters, for $16,000 to cover surgical bills.

Mick and Pauleen Lewis watch on from the stands during their son’s 2020 NRL debut at AAMI Park. Picture: AAP

“So there’s been some shit times,” continues the fella whose career bounced through stints with Shellharbour, Thirroul and Helensburgh.

But the lowest point?

That came aged 22, when Lewis failed to make even St George Illawarra’s feeder team.

“After my second knee reconstruction, I went to an Illawarra Cutters trial,” he recalls. “But they only played me 15 minutes.

“Afterwards, the coach pulled me aside and said, ‘Sorry mate, I don’t think you’re a NSW Cup player’.”

Still, this was a kid raised on farm life.

A fella who says of his family’s 1050 hectares in northern NSW: “When you’re working on something you own, everything has purpose.

“You’re not fencing or moving cattle to collect 20 bucks an hour, there’s meaning to it.”

So with the Cutters training out of Wollongong University, where Lewis was already enrolled in a teaching degree, he asked for permission to stay on.

Coach Craig Bellamy calls the shots at a Melbourne Storm training session at Gosch's Paddock.

“I’d already scheduled all my classes to fit in with training,” he says. “So I just hung around like a bad smell.”

And guess what?

After two other backrowers eventually quit, then two more got injured, Lewis not only found himself winning the 2016 NSW Cup off the bench in jersey No. 22, but signed to the Dragons NRL squad.

Which would’ve been great if he played. But it never happened.

Just as by the end of that year, and after taking up teaching, Lewis would be offered to train and trial with Storm — only to again get punted.

“Given Melbourne’s reputation for resurrecting blokes, I really thought I could be that guy down there,” he says.

“But after six weeks of pre-season, we had one of those torturous three-day army camps. It was so tough, no sleep. Then afterwards, we debriefed — then they let me go.”

Dedication has paid off for Lewis, seen here playing against Penrith Panthers this year. Picture: NRL Photos via Getty Images

Still, Bellamy had seen something. Enough to not only call Lewis back again next summer, but sign him — albeit on a deal worth $20,000 less than he was already earning in classrooms.

So as for how it feels to get an NRL development contract at 27?

“I just told people Melbourne were developing me to become 28,” he laughs.

Yet in Round 4 of 2020, and after a decade of toil, Lewis finally made an NRL debut so special, his parents drove a 30-hour round trip to attend. Better, their boy has played another 22 games since.

This resurrected history teacher is now set to wear jersey No. 13 for the premiership favourites in Thursday Night Football against Gold Coast.

So as for what this bush boy makes of Bellyache?

“First time he spoke to me was to say I was debuting in the NRL,” Lewis laughs. “Or at least that’s what I say.

“But it’s not exactly true. Instructionally, Craig talks to you a lot. And that’s from day one.

“I actually think he uses it as a chance to assess people, see how they react to his advice.”

Sounds like you understand the guy?

“He’s a normal bloke,” the Ashford boy says. “Well, normal might be a stretch. But he’s certainly given me confidence.”

Which matters. Especially after the past 12 years.

“When so often it’s felt like I was the only person who thought I’d make it,” Lewis says.

“But to now have Craig Bellamy see something in me, too? Yeah, that’s validation.”