Ben Hunt and Cooper Cronk reflect on pressure and the spirit of Anzac Day

THE traditional Anzac Day clash between the Dragons and the Roosters is one of the highlights of the season, but also serves as a solemn reminder of those who made the greatest of sacrifices.

DISCUSSING pressure in the game of rugby league on Anzac Day? Not a great idea.

Especially when recalling Australia’s favourite World War II pilot and sometime Test cricketer Keith Miller.

Quizzed on the pressures of playing Test cricket, the RAAF flying officer replied: “Pressure? There’s no pressure in Test cricket. Real pressure is flying a Mosquito with a Messerschmitt up your arse!”

Cooper Cronk had never heard this quote. Nor Ben Hunt.

“But hearing you tell it now,” the St George Illawarra halfback says, “yeah, you realise the pressure of playing NRL ... it’s nothing.”

Hunt and Cronk will go head to head on Wednesday.

Which is why, of all the days to analyse Hunt’s life beneath an NRL spotlight — the expectation, the stress, the unending white noise — none seems less appropriate than Anzac Day.

Still, here we are anyway ahead of St George Illawarra taking on the Sydney Roosters in the Anzac clash.

For when it comes to the biggest yarn of this Allianz Stadium blockbuster, or the biggest not involving Diggers, Last Posts and goosebumps popping on tattooed forearms, it has to be that of the opposing halfbacks — Cronk and Hunt.

A pair of playmakers who, more than now passing the Queensland No. 7 jersey between themselves, more than running new backlines or earning contracts more suited to Who Wants to Be a Millionaire?, are showing exactly how to devour expectation.

And no, theirs isn’t the greatest stress young men can face. A truth put most eloquently by Miller.

Yet still, when Hunt agreed to St George Illawarra’s $6 million offer for 2018, well, good luck dodging the questions and criticisms fired his way.

Doubts, too.

The match will be Hunt’s first Anzac Day game with the Dragons.

Yet who doesn’t think this country Queenslander is worth the cash now?

Apart from running out Wednesday afternoon with his Dragons atop the NRL table, or his own Origin spot seemingly assured, Hunt has proved himself worthy of that famed salary.

Which isn’t so much a new story as the latest chapter for this former Brisbane Bronco who played in the shadows of Alfie Langer, was dropped to Ipswich Jets and even fumbled that grand final kick-off against the North Queensland Cowboys in 2015.

“But being able to let things go, it’s something I find easy,” Hunt says. “Same as I’ve never thought too long or hard about what other people say.

“I’m just lucky I guess.”

And so it is on the other side of halfway, with Cronk.

“Pressure, it’s a funny thing,” says the man who measures NRL composure not in games, but years, Origin series, World Cups and premierships.

“You can’t feel pressure. Can’t see or touch it, either.

“So is it even real?

“For me, pressure is what you make it. Footballers going into games with pressure on their shoulders, it’s really only what they’ve brought on themselves ... what they perceive it to be.”

So pressure doesn’t exist?

Hunt has been in top form this season.

“I know it’s out there,” Cronk says. “But that doesn’t mean I have to feel it.”

At which point we suggest this particular mindset, it must take more than a little work to perfect, right?

Especially given our sporting landscape is littered with moments such as Greg Norman’s US Masters collapse in 1996, the ’97 Socceroos, even swimmer Cate Campbell and the so-called “greatest choke in Olympic history”.

“Oh, it’s taken a few grey hairs to get to this point,” Cronk agrees.

“But at the end of the day, going out and performing in the NRL is simply about falling back on the work you’ve done Monday to Friday.

“So to handle pressure, as you call it ... that’s just executing your skills. Your technique. Perfecting all of that.

“The analogy I use with young players coming through is that game day, it’s like taking cash from the ATM.

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“And the more training you’ve put in — the more hours and effort you’ve put into your craft — the more cash you can withdraw game day.”

And so it will be again Wednesday afternoon when these two halfbacks headline a match not only devoted to those Australians who served and died at Gallipoli, but countless other battlefields in Korea, Vietnam, France, Germany, even Afghanistan.

“This game,” Hunt says, “it’s one of the first things the boys talked to me about when I first arrived.

“They said Anzac Day would be the biggest game of the year. Something I’d remember for the rest of my life.”

Having played on this day with the Melbourne Storm, Cronk also understands the emotion the event carries.

The match has rapidly become one of the most anticipated games on the NRL calender.

“The thing about playing on Anzac Day, we don’t pay the ultimate sacrifice,” he says. “But we better play the game in the right spirit.

“And I know when you’ve got a sold-out Allianz Stadium, the ceremonies, the atmosphere, the build-up, yeah, you do have niggles. There is a lot of passion and emotion.

“But you still need to play it in the right spirit.

“You can go out there and play as hard and as physical as you want, but remember that this game is bigger than you as an individual. There is more on the line in terms of honour and respect.”

But as for more pressure, too?

“People think in bigger games, you need to try harder,” Cronk says. “Come up with more spectacular plays.

“But for me, history has shown that if I do a lot of little things right, the big things take care of themselves.

“So pressure can still be out there. But it doesn’t stop me doing what I need to do.”

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