Chris Heighington celebrates 300 NRL matches with Tigers, Sharks
CHRIS Heighington has played at two clubs and won two premierships. David Riccio caught up with the man who today runs out for his 300th game and joins the legends.
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TOM Heighington tells the story about his youngest son Chris, as though he’s never told it to anyone in his life.
“I’ll tell you one thing, you’re halfway there in life if you’ve got the determination,’’ Heighington said.
“Chris has always been determined, just like the day he caught the ferry in the bushfires.’’
That day, as Tom explains, was in early January, 2003.
Chris Heighington, was a 20-year-old when 27 fire trucks were placed on stand-by, as wind-fanned flames began to surround his parents’ home of Umina, on the NSW Central Coast.
All forms of transport by road were cut-off, with the Pacfic Highway to Sydney closed.
Only a few months earlier, young Chris had signed with the Wests Tigers after former head coach Tim Sheens had watched the energetic North Sydney Bears forward tackle every blue and white Canterbury jersey that moved on the Sydney Showgrounds.
Sheens’ offer to train and trial for three months with the Tigers first-grade squad, which included proven performers like Terry Hill, Mark O’Neill, John Skandalis and Darren Senter, was worth $5000.
The paltry pay was incidental.
“This is my chance to prove myself,’’ Chris wrote down onto a notepad.
Residents of the Central Coast beach town were warned by the fire department to stay off the roads.
But a rapidly approaching bushfire wasn’t going to stop the Umina Bunnies’ all-time leading pointscorer from missing Sheens’ Friday 9am training session at Concord with the Tigers.
And so Chris began a four-hour travel plan which optimises the determination his proud father speaks of and a dressing room benchmark which Sheens would point at for other players to strive for.
They are traits which have never left the 35-year-old throughout a remarkable 15 years in the NRL.
And it helps explain why against Newcastle at Southern Cross Group Stadium on Saturday afternoon, in front ex-teammates and close family and friends, the popular two-time premiership winning Cronulla forward will become just the 26th player since 1908 to play 300 first-grade games.
“I sat down the night before training and thought, I just have to get there,’’ Chris remembers.
LISTEN TO DAVE RICCIO’S FULL INTERVIEW WITH CHRIS HEIGHINGTON WHERE WHERE HE REVEALS THE TOUGHEST PLAYER HE EVER MET, THE PRANKS THEY PULLED ON TIM SHEENS AND WHY HE WAS IN BED BY 10PM AFTER WINNING THE 2005 GRAND FINAL
Taking the short drive in his battered army-green VB Commodore from his Umina home to the Ettalong Beach wharf, Chris slung his Tigers training bag over his shoulder and boarded the 6am ferry to Palm Beach.
On the half-hour ride, he used his Nokia 3210 mobile phone to call Sheens.
“I tried to let him know I would be running late to training, but maybe what I was really trying to say without saying it, because I was too shy, was that I wasn’t a quitter and that I would get there ... eventually,’’ Chris said.
Other kids his age, even some young stars today, wouldn’t have bothered when the fire chief came knocking.
But Chris, he had to try.
Just like that season in the Umina under-12s, when the only McDonalds Award for man of the match he didn’t win that year, was the one Tom demanded be given to someone else in the team.
Chris had to show Sheens he was willing to do what others wouldn’t.
Just like the day during the 2003 pre-season, that instead of stopping to be physically-sick during a gut-busting road run, Chris just kept jogging — as ‘it’ gushed down his shirt.
“I don’t know why I did that. I was possessed, to take that opportunity and to be as good at training as a Mark O’Neill or Darren Senter,’’ Chris said.
Chris always had to find a way to keep moving.
Like that Friday night in round six 2012, when in a loss against the Brisbane Broncos, the Tigers lock-forward played-on with three broken bones in his hand.
It’s the same left hand which has been held together by 18 screws and three metal plates ever since.
Having finally arrived at Palm Beach, young Heighington then sat anxiously for 90 minutes on a crowded bus bound for Central station.
Once at Central, he leapt from the bus to then hail a taxi for Concord.
It was now 9am and Tigers training was underway.
“And that traffic on Parramatta Rd on a Friday morning, everyone knows what that’s like,’’ Chris said. “We weren’t even moving.’’
He could’ve pulled the pin then and there.
But Chris wasn’t giving up. It never crossed his mind.
He would have the same chance to quit 10 years later.
The heart and soul of the Tigers on and off the field,’’ according to former teammate Benji Marshall, Chris was called by Sheens into a small office at Concord Oval, in September 2012.
“Sheensy sat me down and said: ‘It’s time for me to bring through some younger boys and for you to move on from the Tigers’,’’ Chris said.
“It came as a shock, I was playing good footy.
“I thought the Tigers would be the only place I ever play. I had made my debut in 2003 and 40-odd games later, we won the comp in 2005.
“To then go on and play 200 first grade games with the Tigers, those 11 years were incredible.
“But Beau (Ryan) and I left and then Sheensy got sacked a month later. They’ve (Wests Tigers) never got back on track since.
“But I wasn’t finished, I knew that.
“I met Phil Gould and he offered me a three-year deal to join Penrith, I also met Flanno (Sharks coach Shane Flanagan) at the Novotel Brighton.
“Flanno spoke to me about him needing a few characters in the club and I liked the idea that he had Luke Lewis, Michael Gordon and Beau.
“It all happened in the space of two weeks.
“And what a decision that was to join the Sharks.
“It’s hard to believe now that I’ve won another premiership and been part of bringing the likes of Gal and Flanno so much happiness to the Shire.’’
Finally arriving at Concord, the shy and stressed teenager from Umina slammed the door before the taxi driver could stop, sprinting with his bag over his shoulder towards his teammates who were already hard at work.
In the years that followed, Sheens would begin most pre-seasons by telling Chris’s story of desire to every young Tiger craving first grade.
On Saturday afternoon, after a career boasting more runs and hits than he has recieved on YouTube for dropping the F-bomb three times in a 13-second interview with Matt Johns after the 2005 grand final, Chris will become the player he once looked up too.
“It’s hard to believe I’m on the same list of 300-game players as him. To see my name alongside Brad Fittler, Darren Lockyer, Terry Lamb, Andrew Ettingshausen and many more, I’m just so grateful,’’ the English international said.
“I’ve been blessed to have my ever supportive wife Sonya, my two kids Rocco and Billie, my friends and family with me on this ride, it’s been amazing.
“Not bad for a boy from little old Umina.’’
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