The day Melbourne coach Craig Bellamy nearly joined the Cronulla Sharks

THE playing career of Craig Bellamy is sometimes overlooked but it helped shape who he is as a coach and nearly saw him join Cronulla writes PAUL KENT.

Melbourne Storm training at Goschs Paddock, Coach Craig Bellamy at training. Melbourne. 9th July 2015. Picture: Colleen Petch.

CRAIG Bellamy got to Canberra in 1982 and at the end of the 1984 season he was working at Queanbeyan Leagues Club when God called.

He wanted him at Cronulla.

Jack Gibson had just taken a year off after getting Parramatta to three straight premierships and now he was about to turn the porch light on for Harold Holt.

It was a job that was going to take some doing, winning Cronulla that first premiership, and Gibson knew the kind of player he needed.

Bellamy was a Gibson-type player.

What that means is he was honest and tough and the kind you could depend on week to week, which makes you the kind a coach can do plenty with.

Bellamy sure thought about it.

“I thought he might be able to really help my game at the time, that was my driving force,” Bellamy says.

Bellamy played 149 matches for Canberra from 1982 to 1992

In the end, though, he did not go and stayed at Canberra.

And so what happened was one of those sliding doors moments. What might have happened nobody will ever know.

Bellamy has gone on to become regarded as the best coach in rugby league.

What if he had played under Gibson, regarded as the game’s greatest coach?

“It’s certainly not a regret, the decision I made, but I would have liked to have played under him or worked under him as an assistant,” he said. “Obviously with Ronny Massey as well.”

Bellamy met Massey at the Broncos, where he often sat next to Wayne Bennett in the coaches box and ate breakfast at the buffet in the team hotel.

“You didn’t have to sit down with him very long to realise how much he knew about footy,” Bellamy says.

“I never got that opportunity with Jack.”

Bellamy will be chasing his fifth grand final win on Sunday.

What Gibson might have taught him he will never know.

For a time there was strong lineage of coaches influenced by Gibson. John Monie won one premiership here and many in England. Peter Louis coached successfully at the Bears, Mick Cronin, Ron Hilditch, Allan Fitzgibbon, Terry Fearnley ...

It seemed for a while that almost every head coach in the game either sprang from the Gibson lineage or that of Warren Ryan, the other coaching giant.

In the modern game, though, nobody shows more influence than Tim Sheens.

Bellamy, Ricky Stuart, Michael Maguire, Mal Meninga, Kevin Walters and Laurie Daley all coached this season and all played at Canberra under Sheens.

Sheens got to Canberra in 1988 after a successful job at Penrith.

If Bellamy had left for Cronulla they would never have met.

Which is a terrible thought, as it is quite possible and even likely that Bellamy is a better coach now for serving under Sheens than he would have been if he worked under Jack.

He could not have served a more perfect apprenticeship than he did at Canberra.

He knows as much.

“Without doubt I would have liked to have spent a bit of time with him but having said that I probably wouldn’t have swapped it from the time I had with Tim,” he said.

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“It was bit of a two-pronged thing at Canberra at the time.

“He was a great coach. Very much into technical, tactical, that side of the game, which all coaches have to be to some extent but he was at the forefront.”

Bellamy still remembers Sheens walking into their first training session for the week with three VHS tapes. He had broken down the opposition attack on one, their defence on the other and their kicking game on the third. Nobody was doing it like that then.

He saw the benefit of intense preparation and the path to it. It understates everything he does in his coaching today.

“For that time, to be doing that to such an extent, was unprecedented,” Bellamy says.

Certainly Gibson was not doing homework anything like it.

By then players had begun to change and the game was changing around it and, as often as not, Massey was doing most of the coaching at Cronulla as Gibson.

“But the other thing at that time was we had a lot of players there that had a lot of care about their club and about their teammates,” he says.

“And not just a lot of care for their club and teammates, they also had a great love for rugby league.

“Tim’s beliefs and values helped us because we learned about the game. We all wanted to make a career out of it.”

It is a sentiment that rings familiar.

He could almost be talking about Melbourne, the way he speaks of what Sheens created at the Raiders.

Gavin Miller won the Rothmans and Dally M medals in 1989.

GAVIN MILLER

Cronulla legend, arguably their best ...

You’re at the Cronulla grand final lunch, it must be pretty special.

It’s absolutely rocking. I’ve just had to go into the Chairman’s Lounge it’s that bloody loud.

Dean Treister has come all the way from America, where he lives, for it. ET’s here, Mat Rogers, Alan Wilson, Mitch Healey ... Everyone is sky high.

It has been a long time coming. The excitement in the Shire is unprecedented, as you can imagine. It’s been 37 years since the last one. There was 1997 but you sort of don’t count that.

How have you found the Shire?

I’m trying to duck and weave at the moment, it’s a little hard getting from one end to the other. A lot of shops have shown their support with balloons and streamers.

How are you feeling? Confident?

I’m looking for the right word ... maybe nervous? I’m quietly confident that we can get the money but we’re playing a very well coached football team. It’s imperative that Cronulla start well early. I just have to get there first.

How tough will that be?

Well I went to last week’s game on a supporters bus and the traffic was horrendous. That’s going to be the challenge in the first place.

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A ROUGH WEEK FOR

FOR many years he was the reason they watched. While the purists wanted to marvel over Jack Nicklaus, the masses wanted Arnold Palmer, who died this week aged 87.

He played like he’d just stepped down from his truck, his hair stuck to his forehead, the tail of his shirt hanging out, and he made golf popular.

He never played it safe, like the Sunday hackers he always went for it. As the great Jim Murray once wrote: “Arnold Palmer didn’t make golf, he just put it on page one.”

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THIS weekend it is all about Sydney versus Bleak City. The Swans take on Western Bulldogs today (Channel 7, 2.30pm) while Cronulla heads up Sydney’s NRL charge, taking on the Storm tomorrow (Channel 9, 6.30pm).

I’m tipping both trophies to be sitting safely north of the border come tomorrow night. The clash of the weekend comes in the NRL, though, when Mick “The Menace” Ennis and Cameron “Mr and Mrs” Smith lock horns. Smith is the silent assassin, Ennis not so much.

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CHILL PILLS

BENJI Marshall met with NRL officials recently to show his third party sponsors are the real deal and he will be taking them with him, allowing him to sign on cheaply if a deal comes through. Smart play.

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WORD is Andrew Fifita’s chances of touring with Australia are diminishing because, quite simply, officials can’t trust him to behave.