Billy Slater’s 300th: Paul Kent pays tribute to Melbourne Storm legend
LET’S begin our story at the end, just a week before round one when we are at the Melbourne Storm’s 20 year dinner. Paul Kent pays tribute to Billy Slater ahead of his 300th NRL game.
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LET’S begin our story at the end, just a week before round one when we are at the Melbourne Storm’s 20 year dinner.
One of the Storm fans is there talking to assistant coach Adam O’Brien and his wife Sharon and in the general vicinity is Billy Slater.
The mum is upset. Holding it together, but upset.
Her husband died some years back, leaving her alone with her son.
He is a gentle boy grieving the loss of his dad with the fear of the young, which is the fear of being left all alone, and from those fears he formed a strong attachment to his mum.
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The school drop off became a solid hug and a kiss every morning.
As the mum is talking, Billy Slater’s ears begin to tune in to the story.
Life is about unfamiliar settings, he knows, in all sorts of ways.
The key is to find your way, to keep going.
When Slater first got to Melbourne he was really a centre. And when Craig Bellamy picked him that first time in first grade it was at centre.
But then there was a late injury, and Slater got shifted to fullback, and the earth moved.
Bellamy already believed by then Slater would be their best fullback.
“He always wanted to be around the ball, even at training, doing conditioning drills,” Bellamy says.
“Playing at wing or centre he’d often be out of position.”
It frustrated Bellamy.
“But what I noticed was he’d always be close to the ball. That was my first recollection of him ...”
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Bellamy played at Canberra during their greatest era and then assisted Wayne Bennett as coach through what might have been theirs.
In Slater, he saw something he had not seen at either club with all those great athletes.
“I’d never seen a guy win the endurance stuff and the speed stuff also,” he says.
Slater just worked that damn hard, he won it all.
There were some problems in those early days.
Bellamy describes himself as a conservative personality, and, “Billy’s far from that.”
Slater pushed his game, often making mistakes with what Bellamy believed were low percentage plays.
It was his nature, the young man finding his way, pushing the edge.
“We came to an agreement,” Bellamy says. “If I’d seen him practising it for a month at training, then he could give it a try.”
Bellamy was banking on what assistant Adam O’Brien saw when he got to the club six years ago.
Melbourne was already at the top of their game driven by the trio of Slater, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk.
“The best attribute of Bill,” O’Brien says, “is his ability to recognise detail. Even minor details. He retains details better than anyone I’ve ever seen.”
O’Brien is talking about moments in games like the time he saw Slater shifting across field early in a game and the defence going with him.
Nobody can match Slater in pure athletic terms, so it was clear their opponents had worked specifically on shutting Slater down.
Slater saw it, remembered how they set up against him.
Later in the game he positioned a teammate exactly where he needed him. Then he shifted and the defence shifted with him like they had all game, only they hadn’t anticipated on this new player Slater had brought in.
He shaped to pass, the defence paused, Slater was gone.
It is the small moment that speaks to his greatness. After all, what is greatness but the small victory over and over again.
“His greatest education was his want,” Bellamy says.
“Or what I call the grind.”
Everything is about the details for Slater.
Bellamy never saw a player watch so much video.
“He’s always looking for ways to do things better,” Bellamy says and he absorbed it all..
“I’ve never been a first grade coach of any other guys in those positions,” Bellamy says.
It is total humility. Slater, Cameron Smith, Cooper Cronk ... none of them would be the player they are now without Bellamy’s attention to their game. Such was the quality and speed of their educations, though, they now dictate much of the Storm’s gameplan.
“Early on, I wanted to have a bit more say but the last five, six, seven years, they’re the guys out there doing it,” Bellamy says.
“We’ve had some good coaches here but, with due respect, those three guys are probably the best coaches we’ve got.”
His legacy is his greatness.
“He changed the way fullbacks play, without a doubt,” Bellamy says.
It brings him to tonight, where Slater runs out for his 300th game as possibly the greatest fullback ever.
Such claims always seem sentimental when emotions are high. The greatness of Clive Churchill and Graeme Langlands has grown dusty and dim with time, while Slater is current.
But then you recall Ron Massey, one of the great rugby league intellects and a man who sat in too many winning dressing rooms to be prone to sentiment.
Shortly before his death in September 2016 Mass declared Slater the best of them all. He was unequivocal. And Mass was around long enough to go to watch both Langlands and Churchill.
That’s why they will turn up tonight. It is not often you get to say you saw the best there ever was.
And they will also turn up to watch the player who used to be a young man uncertain of his place in the world.
Who just a few weeks ago listened to an upset mother talk about her son, now fatherless, and how his classmates began picking up on his big hugs goodbye each morning and teasing him about it until, finally, he returned home from school camp that week with a black eye.
What to do.
Slater removed himself from the conversation and walked away to an empty table and sat down with stationery picked up at the function.
He wrote the boy a letter, inviting him into tonight’s dressing room to share his 300th game.
The letter was simple and all Billy.
“You’ve got a friend if you ever need anything ...”
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Forget that Marroun has a troubled past with the game and is currently serving a six-year suspension from the game that ends in 2020.
Ask yourself why one of the first points of business for a club that has promised to go back to its “core values” and a “Family Club” ethos was to sack its greatest ever player and appoint a businessman whose reputation is blemished.
Something doesn’t add up.
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