Cameron Smith’s memoirs have caused more drama for the Melbourne legend

Cameron Smith keeps everyone guessing as controversy follows the launch of his autobiography.

Cameron Smith cancelled all media interviews on Tuesday Picture: Getty Images

Cameron Smith was meant to do the interview circuit on Tuesday. All part of the promotion for his autobiography, which was released earlier this week.

The Australian was locked in for 11.30am, among close to 30 interviews he was scheduled to carry out in the hope of maximising sales in the lead-up to Christmas.

Preparation is an interviewer’s best friend so, aside from the swirling controversies that have shadowed the book’s release, we spent Monday preparing questions centred around Smith’s future and State of Origin.

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Two birds, one stone and all that. We got out of bed nice and early, snuck in an early morning swim and some exercise down at Manly, and then checked the phone.

Runner’s high quickly gave way to reporter’s low. Smith’s round of interviews were cancelled en masse and our plans for an easy Origin preview were on the scrap heap.

Those close to Smith insisted a family matter had arisen. It had nothing, they said, to do with the media scrutiny that has shadowed the publication of his memoirs and the subsequent picking at the festering scabs of his career.

The salary cap scandal and his spat with Cooper Cronk had dominated days since the book was released. Smith’s truth had its critics. Not for the first time, his version of events was being pulled apart.

With Smith, you are either with him or against him. You don’t really have a choice. Smith sympathisers – in the interest of full disclosure, I am no doubt regarded as one – sometimes find it hard to rationalise some of the vitriol that gets directed his way by sections of the media.

That’s not to say Smith doesn’t occasionally bring it on himself. You only had to look at Tuesday, a day when Smith supporters and critics alike were left high and dry, leaving the publisher’s public relations department to pass on the bad news.

No doubt, Smith envisaged this would be a rocky week. The issues he covered, and his career as a result, are covered in hairs. Look no further than the salary cap debacle, which a decade on continues to polarise fans of the game.

The Storm insist on acknowledging the premierships that were stripped, alienating supporters at rival clubs because it is viewed as the club apparently thumbing their nose at the game’s powerbrokers.

My view is who really cares? If Melbourne want to honour the players who won those titles, so be it. Many of them were innocent parties in what went on. Let them bask in it.

The record books are what count and suggest the 2007 and 2009 premierships were won by no-one. Their name has been removed from the trophy. The only remnant of those wins is their celebratory T-shirts and their own memories.

The rest of us have long moved on. Smith’s version no doubt correlates with many in Melbourne. Only last month, The Australian spoke to former director Peter Maher who still hasn’t given up hope of reclaiming their lost titles and still has the legal advice on which their argument would have been based.

Former NRL chief executive David Gallop no doubt believes he stands on solid footing as well. The split with Cronk should be cause for regret rather than recriminations. Two men who spent a lifetime alongside each other are now at odds and each has their own version of events. The truth is no doubt somewhere in the middle.

I for one hope that one day they settle their differences, shake hands and renew a friendship that should have stood the test of time. They were two of the central figures in one of the game’s great dynasties. They scaled the heights together. Their bond should be unbreakable. As it stands, it is in pieces. We can only hope that at some point they find a way to glue it back together.

As for Smith’s future, the answer to that question is a pineapple. If this week is anything to go by, it is hard to see Smith returning. In the wake of the ring fiasco, when Smith’s wife Barb was given a gift by the NRL to mark her husband’s 400th game, such was the criticism that he pondered walking away.

“Rugby league no longer felt like the game that I fell in love with,” he wrote in The Storm Within.

“Then I looked at it another way. To walk away would have been handing a victory to those critics. I knew I could still play at the top level.

“And when I thought hard about it, I still wanted to play. I made a decision: I wasn’t going to be driven out of the game.
“I was going to end my career when the time was right, and on my terms.”

Smith gritted his teeth, kept going and won another premiership. He has been one of the most resilient and determined players in the game’s history. But everyone has their breaking point. This week may have been it.