Teenage prodigy Joseph Suaalii has the world at his feet

Talented stars who have seen it all have sage advice for a teen prodigy.

Joseph Suaalii turns 17 on Saturday. ‘I just hope he is careful about what he reads and knows when to switch off from the noise,’ advises NSW coach Brad Fittler. Picture: Paul Seiser/SPA Images

It was 1989 and Brad Fittler, 16, sat on the Panthers bench watching grown men crash and bleed on the field. He didn’t even feel nervous. Fittler felt nothing except pride when he was asked to run on for the Panthers in his first ever game.

The Western Suburbs Magpies had no idea how good the Penrith kid was.

“I went on and they couldn’t touch me,” Fitter recalls. “They hadn’t seen my sidestep before. I just had an afternoon out. We won pretty easily.”

Watch Every Game of the 2020 NRL Tesltra Premiership Indigenous Round Live & On-Demand with Kayo. New to Kayo? Get your 14-day free trial & start streaming instantly >

However, the next week, it all got very real for the prodigy.

They were at Leichhardt Oval, the hill and stands were jammed with Balmain fans, the teen again started on the bench. The Tigers were a team loaded with brute superstars like Steve ‘Blocker’ Roach and Paul Sironen and the mood was wild.

“I remember the coach was saying before the game we needed to start a fight in the first scrum, we needed to soften them up,” Fittler said. “There were three brawls in the first 10 minutes.”

Suddenly, Panthers five-eighth Brad Izzard was grabbing at his hamstring. They turned to the kid with the mesmerising sidestep and told him to get on.

“I was almost crying, I was thinking; ‘you couldn’t possibly throw me out there’,” Fittler said. “It was just crazy. They smashed me.”

Within minutes of setting his footy boots on the park, Tigers enforcer Bruce McGuire had punched Fittler in the face.

“I am lying there on Leichhardt Oval, I thought I need to stand up for myself, so I head butted him back a bit,” Fittler said. Then Greg Alexander kicked the ball down field, it was then McGuire grabbed Fittler by the jumper.

‘Mate, if you do that again, I will kill you,” McGuire said.

Upon recalling the memory Fittler says; “I learnt a couple of lessons early.”

Penrith’s Brad Fittler runs with the ball in a 1989 match against Western Suburbs at Orana Park, Campbelltown.

Today another teen prodigy is on the cusp of a possibly brilliant football career.

Joseph Suaalii, who turns 17 on Saturday, is the subject of a code war and is expected to make his decision around signing with South Sydney. While Freddy Fittler was paid a total of $1000 in his first year at Penrith – Suaalii’s Rabbitohs contract is understood to be $2m over four years.

“There’s a great life there for him,” Fittler said. “I would launch head first into his shoes if I could do it all over again.”

History tells us Fittler’s career ended up being amazing. Two years after debuting for Penrith he helped them win their first premiership. At 18 years and 114 days, he became the youngest player in State of Origin history and then, 115 days later, the youngest Kangaroo player to tour Great Britain. Now a successful Origin coach he has one piece of advice: “I just hope he is careful about what he reads and knows when to switch off from the noise. He seems like a really good kid.”

Fellow teen prodigy-turned superstar footballer, Tim Watson also remembers a very uncomplicated rise to the top when he first hit the VFL scene in 1977 – nothing like the attention that Suaalii has encountered.

In Suaalii’s case, to help seal the deal with Souths, he was flown by private jet to Hollywood star Russell Crowe’s Nana Glen ranch.

In Watson’s instance, he recalls three Essendon officials arriving at this family’s home in the quiet country town of Dimboola on a Wednesday night. They were there “to secure” the 15-year-old footy prodigy’s release from the Dimboola Football Club. The men gave him an Essendon club bag in which he packed everything he owned.

“I hopped in the back of their car, we drove back to Melbourne, I had every earthly belonging in my Essendon footy bag,” Watson said. “That was it.”

Tim Watson was just 15 when he made his debut for Essendon.

There was debate on the four-hour car trip about where the kid would stay that night in Melbourne. The Essendon officials concluded he would stay at a board member’s house. Watson remembers not being at all nervous or worried.

“To be honest, it was so exciting to leave a small country town and embark on a journey like that, I mean we rarely even went to Melbourne,” he said.

Watson found out he would be playing after The Sun called and asked if they could do a story. At dusk on a Friday night the paper sent a photographer around. He posed for the photographer, running down the street, in an old Essendon jumper. On Saturday morning he woke up excited to see if his photo was in the paper.

“I always go to the back pages first, like I always do, and there was nothing there,” Watson said. “I thought, ‘oh, they’ve taken that photo and it’s not there’.”

“I turned the paper over, and it was there on the front page. That hit me then. I thought, ‘oh wow, that’s bigger than I thought it was’.”

Watson went on to have a magnificent career with 307 games, 335 goals and three VFL/AFL premierships – 1984, 1985 and 1993.

As for the money? In his first season he made $1600 for playing 16 games of footy.

Today he is up early hosting a sports show on SEN radio in Melbourne and has watched the Suaalii situation unfold from afar. It’s nothing like what he experienced.

“It’s so different now and the focus is so intense,” Watson said.

“Young people playing sport, you get evaluated week to week, you don’t get a chance to settle in and play. Everyone is closely analysing everything you do. That was one of the great things playing back in those days, you got the chance to mature as a young person, settle in and play. There were internal pressures but there wasn’t great feeling of external pressures.”

“I think that it is an area, is as important in terms of the education around it, as well as being actually able to play the game itself. You have to be able to deal with it (external pressure). And, some people can. At 18 years of age they are really mature and can cope with these things.

“At 15, I look at the position I found myself in, I could have easily gone off the rails, I had no parental guidance from 15 onwards ... but some people won’t, they will be focused on what they are doing and just get through it.”

Now seasoned Wallaby James O’Connor remembers being a carefree teenager when he became the youngest player to debut in Super Rugby for the Western Force.

James O’Connor was only 17 when he played his first Super Rugby game for the Western Force.

Back in 2008 he recalls scootering to training, because he didn’t yet have a full licence, and when that broke down riding a pushbike with two huge footy bags on his back.

“We would literally go from training, to the beach to eating Nando’s, back to training, then to my mate’s house who had a pool,” O’Connor said. “We were literally kids. We’d play footy on the beach, surf in the morning. It was a great time of my life.”

That same year he played his first match for the Wallabies. O’Connor was seen by many as a once-in-a-generation talent. “I shot straight up to the top of the pile and got my chance, I fought hard to stay there,” he said. O’Connor said in his early rugby years he felt no pressure at all.

“The pressure came later,” O’Connor said. “The thing that got me, I thought I was at the top of my game at 21/22, and back then I was always chasing pleasure, I had never seen money like that. Every door started opening for me. I would go to a restaurant and there would be no bill. Your ego kicks in. You think you are untouchable.”

Dark times hit. O’Connor infamously went “off the rails” several times, later confessing to using drink and drugs as an escape, but is now in a “great” head space. He credits the organisation Saviour World for turning his life around. With their guidance he has made changes like embracing meditation and “intermittent fasting’’ but importantly he is playing for bigger reasons.

“The first thing I did was try to work out how to get my purpose back,” he said. “When I first started I played for the right reasons, for the love of the game, so today it is about using my platform to inspire other men and people who have been in dark places, that they can get through.”

The now 30-year-old O’Connor – with 25 Test caps – has this advice for Suaalii.

“You are going to get access to everything you can ever dream of,” O’Connor said. “But just be careful because it’s not all it is cracked up to be. Keep your circle tight. Keep your family tight. And just make sure you are playing rugby for the right reasons. Whatever got you there, make sure you are feeding that.”