How Paul Gallen transformed into a Cronulla legend and rugby league’s ultimate ironman
On the day Paul Gallen says farewell to Shark Park after 19-seasons, David Riccio reveals the uncompromising regimen which has transformed a proud Westie into one of Cronulla’s greatest ever players.
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The apprentice plumber pulled through the gates of Shark Park behind the wheel of his aqua Suzuki Swift.
It’s game day — the first at home for a proud teenage Westie who fixes pipes in the morning and stuffs boxing bags after training to help supplement his $125-a-week rugby league contract.
He takes a deep breath, closes the door of his cheap hatchback and takes the few first steps on a path that will take him on a painstaking journey that will last 19 years.
So much will unfold, but Paul Gallen will never forget his first game at home — just like he wants to remember his last at Shark Park.
“It’s funny, after everything that has happened during my career, I can still remember driving to the ground that day,” Gallen said.
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“They’re great memories, it was the start of a journey.
“But my memories and feelings of my last game will be determined by a win.”
It was a Sunday afternoon, June 2001, that Gallen's excited family drove from their home in Greystanes to wish their boy well, ahead of his NRL debut.
They had knocked-on the door of Gallen's blond-brick two-bedroom unit he was renting with a teammate — and which still stands on Cronulla’s Mitchell Road.
As his proud family buzzed between the borrowed furniture in the lounge room, the 19-year-old anxiously paced the hallway.
“I don’t mean to be rude, but can you please leave?” Gallen asked.
The stocky backrower with explosive power, who just 12 months before had been let go by junior club Parramatta before meeting with eager suitors from the Melbourne Storm and Wests Tigers, had never been so nervous in his life.
He needed quiet. He needed to be alone in his own thoughts. And he needed to start his preparation for a journey over 166 home games, will require 3,177 runs, 4,436 tackles and 27,152 metres.
In a career spanning 346 NRL games,“preparation” will remain the unequivocal formula to the 38-year-old’s exhausting trek “home” for the last time at Shark Park this afternoon.
Last Wednesday, Andrew Johns declared on a Nine podcast that Gallen was the toughest NRL player of the past 15 years.
Sitting beside the eighth Immortal, NSW Origin coach Brad Fittler dropped a headline when detailing how it’s even possible for Gallen to call Shark Park home for longer than he’s been alive.
“His attention to detail in preparation and to get his body in the right state to play a game is incredible and will match any athlete in the world,” Fittler said.
Examples of Fittler’s high praise for the father of four’s unerring focus can be found littered throughout Gallen’s career, arcing right back to that time he asked Mum and Dad to leave his pad on the day of his debut under Johnny Lang.
You can find it on the front seat of any car he’s owned over the past 15 years. It will be in his Holden ute today. You’ll find a lunch box with an apple, banana and box of nuts inside.
To fuel his 103kg frame, the old bull has eaten every two hours, for as long as he can remember.
The snack box stops him from going hungry — whereas other players might choose to fix their hunger-pang with a bucket of fried chicken or drive-through burger.
Every morning, his high-school sweetheart and now wife Anne — the unsung hero in all this — hands Gallen his lunch box and his keys.
There’s a story in the keys too.
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On the key ring is one that unlocks the stadium’s front gates and dressing room with its ice baths. Gallen is the only player in Cronulla’s history to be granted 24/7 access to Shark Park.
For a rehabilitation and recovery-obsessed Gallen, the locks on the gates posed a problem a few years ago. So he asked former club CEO Steve Noyce for a spare key.
Noyce smiled and obliged.
It’s an insight into the mindset of the Shire's favourite warhorse. Such is his physical adaptability and skill level, he has run out of the Andrew Ettingshausen Stand tunnel over the past 19 seasons to play in every position except wing and fullback.
The body maintenance is never-ending.
On Saturday, the teammate who Wade Graham has declared the greatest Shark of all-time slid his body into a cryotherapy freezer at zero-below temperatures in readiness for the Raiders.
There's other rules in the Gallen manual, too, which have enabled him to drag his body up and down Shark Park every winter for 19-years.
There's strictly no alcohol during the week of a game and no KFC, pizza or McDonald’s during season.
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Pilates, yoga, boxing, jiu-jitsu (of which he's a blue belt) have become season staples, while the green and gold electrical tape you’ll see strapped around his boot laces this afternoon goes back to his preparation as a Wentworthville junior. Before every new season, you’ll find Anne walking out of Bunnings with more tape than an electrician.
There was the mandatory night-before spaghetti bolognese on Saturday and if the Fox Sports camera crews are ready as Gallen emerges through a 50-strong guard of honour this afternoon, they’ll spot another 10-year trait.
Cronulla's only captain to win a premiership will use his fingers to tap his head, cheeks, chin and shoulder.
The process came born from his mother (Kerry), who practises Reiki — a form of energy healing. She suggested the final ritual for Gallen’s preparation could help balance his body for battle.
Win or lose against Canberra, Gallen will use his Shark Park locker for the last time in almost 20-years.
It’s the same locker he’s sat at, busted, bruised, stitched, strapped and broken, before returning for the second half.
It’s the locker he has retreated to after epic wins, hard-fought draws and club-shattering losses.
It’s where he’s bowed his head and listened to eight Cronulla first-grade coaches, and where at times he’s feared nine different Sharks CEOs in his time might tell him to pack up.
Win or lose, Gallen will look around the dressing-room one last time and remember the teenager who arrived at Shark Park in a Suzuki — and who at full-time will walk out a club legend.