‘I’ll give you f–ken Gussy’: The spray that turned Fittler into a champion

The coachs room at Penrith Park is so small you cant swing a panther in it. A table, chair and first-grade coach is about as much as you can fit in there.

“Sit there, where I sit,” Phil Gould, the coach, orders Brad Fittler, the 18-year-old superstar.

Gould suddenly shoves the desk towards him, pinning him up against the wall.

“Now, f–ken listen here,” Gould bellows …

About six months earlier, Australian coach Bob Fulton had phoned Gould and asked if Fittler — who was a teenager but had already played for NSW and was headed towards a possible premiership with Penrith that 1990 season — was ready to take the next step.

Advertisement

“Is Freddy too young to take on the Kangaroo tour?” Fulton asked. “He wont be playing any Tests.”

“Nah, mate,” Gould replied. “Hes pretty special, hell be right.”

Gould pulled his prodigy aside before the plane departed for the tour of Great Britain and France.

“Youll be going over there for experience,” Gould warned. “Dont play up, dont make a fool out of yourself, watch and learn.”

Fittler played three matches against English club teams, making him the youngest Kangaroos tourist in history.

After eight weeks away, he returned to Penrith 10 kilograms overweight and much of it from the large chip residing on one of his shoulders.

Reluctantly, Gould allowed him to take a short holiday to the Gold Coast with some mates over the Australia Day long weekend, but made it clear he was to front pre-season training on Tuesday morning.

Tuesday came and went. Then Wednesday. On Thursday night, Fittler finally phoned the coach.

“Gussy!” Fittler said. “What times training tomorrow?”

“7am,” Gould said.

“The boys said it was eight.”

“7am for you.”

Clunk!

On Thursday morning, Fittler crawled out of his mates place with a stinging hangover, onto the back of his mates dirt bike, and then zipped towards Penrith Park.

He was riding up on the median strip and doing bunny-hops before screeching into the carpark in a cloud of dust, right before Goulds bulging eyes. Fittler was wearing a singlet, shorts, thongs and headband.

“How you goin, Gussy?!” Fittler said.

“Ill give you f–ken Gussy. Come with me. Coachs room.”

So now Fittler is pinned to the wall, Gould ready to deliver some home truths. That he was a big head. That he was fat. That he was getting ahead of himself.

“Burn that f–ken bike,” Gould says. “I never want to see it again. Next time I see you, I want you to look like a footballer.”

Fittler leaves the room, in tears. He skulks out of Penrith Park, onto the back of his mates dirt bike and quietly rides away.

At 7.58am the next day, Fittler drives sensibly into the carpark. He's driving his mum's car. He's wearing spotless training gear.

“How do I look?” he asks Gould.

“Beautiful,” says the coach, shaking his head. “Lets go.”

Almost three decades later, Fittler identifies this as the turning point of his career.

Gould recalls it differently. “That was one turning point,” he says. “He had to take a few corners to get where he is now. But hes always been a very special person.”

Then this: “Best spray Ive ever given.”

When I tell Fittler this, he giggles. “There werent any bunny-hops when I left that day. As a young bloke, I was just along for the ride — and I was good at it. I was so into footy. Whatever the team was doing, I was into it. A lot of it revolved around alcohol. All of a sudden you had to juggle balls because you were drinking too much. But I never did anything that was out of line. I dont think I ever went the wrong way.”

No, Fittler went the right way, winning a premiership at Penrith, captaining the Roosters to another, playing and captaining both Australia and NSW. His long-time manager, Wayne Beavis, is cranky Fittler isnt in the Immortal debate.

Thats footy, though.

Away from that, he drinks herbal teas, meditates, does yoga and, since the start of the year, been on a vegan diet. Tuesday nights bonding session with the Blues was his first taste of alcohol this year.

A few weeks ago, Roosters chairman Nick Politis sat next to Fittler on a flight to Brisbane.

"Freddy, what's that?" Politis asked when the hostess plonked a special meal in front of him.

"I've gone vegan, Nick. You should try it."

Politis, who recalls when Fittler preferred bourbon and Coke, shook his head.

Fittler tends to the lamas on his Sydney property where he lives with his delightful wife, Marie, and equally delightful children, Demi and Zach; he cracks jokes on the sideline for Channel Nine; he reads books about ancient philosophers and listens in his car to podcasts from the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle.

Hes an environmentalist, a humanitarian and does more unseen charity work than the public will ever know.

He once called Beavis late at night.

“I want to donate $3000 to the Save the Elephants fund,” he said.

“You WHAT!” the veteran player agent barked.

Fittler is an evolved human who has arrived at the perfect train stop of his life to take on the toughest job in rugby league and quite possibly Australian sport: coaching NSW.

“Hes not a follower,” Gould says. “Hes his own man. When he was young, he stepped out of the crease plenty of times but he was always honest. You didnt have to go searching for the truth. He apologised and never did it again. Hes taken on this task as coach of NSW. Its an enormous job, with enormous pressure. But everything hes done so far has brought him to here.”

There are two moments that helped shaped Fittler as a man.

He was raised by his mum, Christine, after his father, Robbie, a truck driver, upped and left on a road train for Darwin before Fittler was born.

“Other people would be able to tell you if that changed me," he says. "I am what I am. I just get on with it. Footy played a huge part for me, just by being there. I look at my own kids … getting attention is important. I was getting a lot of attention because I was a good footy player. That helps you through. You become the focus because youre good at footy. And where I grew up it was really important. White kid growing up in Ashcroft [in Sydneys south-west], everyone played footy, and I was good at it. If I look at the psychology of why things werent that hard its most probably because I was good at footy.”

The other profound influence on his life was the death of his close friend Ben Alexander, the younger brother of halfback Greg Alexander, who is on Fittlers NSW coaching staff. These arent former teammates to Fittler. They are family. Ben Alexander — “Boods” as he was known — was killed in a car accident in 1992. “It made me stop drink-driving,” says Fittler, who four years later joined Gould at the Roosters.

In August 2007, three years after his retirement, he found himself coaching, taking over from Chris Anderson, who cited health reasons for his departure.

Fittler stood at the back of the coachs box during matches and ate muffins, cheering along with the rest of us in the adjacent press area. He was bunny-hopping through the stress of being the head coach.

He made Braith Anasta captain and squeezed the best out of him. Fittler often deflects his footy intelligence — “I just tell them to run!” he says — but hed devise trick shots for his Roosters players.

“We scored so many times down a short-side because of something Freddy had come up with,” Anasta says.

In 2008, the Roosters went as far as the second week of the finals. By July, 2009, it had all gone sour. His side was last. Hed developed excruciating mouth ulcers because of the stress.

He became surly with the media. Being a coach was turning the games biggest kid into an arsehole. His best mate, Rogan Yates, got on the phone one day. “Youre a nightmare,” he told him, according to Fittler.

Politis asked Gould if he would step in and help. Gould declined but visited Fittler at his home, ready to give it to him straight, just as he had in the coachs room at Penrith Park all those years ago, but softer this time.

“Its over, mate,” Gould told him. “Youve got to give this away.”

“I know its over,” Fittler said. “Ive got no control over them. They arent responding.”

“So, give it away.”

“No, Ill never give up on anything. I know whats going to happen. If they want me to go they have to sack me.”

For the next two hours, Gould tried to sway him. He wouldnt budge. In the end, Fittlers contract wasnt renewed.

“Id lost the dressing-room long before that season,” Fittler says. “I lost it after Origin the year before. We were 12 from 15, winning the comp, then Braith, Mitchell [Pearce], Fitzy [Craig Fitzgibbon], Willie [Mason] … They were pretty much blamed for NSWs loss. They sledge-hammered those blokes. I just didnt realise. I didnt know what they were going through. It all went to shit. That next pre-season, you could tell it was going to be a train crash.”

What did he learn from the experience?

“When I first started coaching the Roosters, I said, Unless you put the team first you are going to have another coach but the same result.”

He bursts into laughter.

“Then I got sacked! The one thing I didnt realise then was that I was learning more in the bad times than the good times. It became glaringly obvious what I was learning about myself.”

Gould knows precisely what Fittler learned.

“I was quite angry about what some of those players did to him,” Gould says. “Thats where he learned about selfishness. Thats the first real example of selfishness hed seen. And hes never been about that. Hes always been about team and family. He was all for the club, all for the coach. But he realised what sort of coach he was and what sort of coach he wasnt. He realised he had to be himself. He had to do it his way.

“I never thought hed coach again but its taken him a long way towards the philosophy hes taken in selecting this NSW team. It reflects his values. If they win, hell take no credit. If they lose, he will take it on his own head. He wont have any elaborate game plans. Hell tell them, This is what Origin is: you either do it or you dont. If you dont, we will perish. This is what I know of it …'”

The weekly grind of the NRL chewed up Fittler and spat him out. Surely, Origin could do the same? Just ask Laurie Daley, who went into hibernation after the Blues lost last years series.

“I cant hide,” Fittler grins. “Im on the sideline for Nine for Friday Night Footy two days later!”

He spends hours on the sidelines. In the first round this season, Fittler was back at Penrith Park — although its a stadium now — minutes before Penrith played the Eels. He had a ball in his hands, like he always does, kicking it to himself, looking over the turf like he was about to play.

“I do take time out in those moments on the field,” he says. “I recognise that a lot of people dont get the chance to do this. Sometimes, I can stand there and not feel like anyone is watching me. I am mindful of how lucky Ive been.”

Before we let him go, lets go back to the coachs room at Penrith Park, when Gould had him pinned against the wall.

Would the coach he is now ever cop the brash young player he was back then? For someone who achieved everything in the game and lived a lot of life long before most us, his response is unexpected.

“I was a late bloomer in everything,” he says. “Ive been immature my whole life. As a player, my best footy was the last four years of my career. Whether its drinking, being a father … Its the reason why Im 46 now and only just understanding what it takes to be a coach. Im still the same person, still making mistakes, but trying to make sure they arent the same mistakes I was making when I was 18.”

Chief Sports Writer, The Sydney Morning Herald

Most Viewed in Sport

Morning & Afternoon Newsletter

Delivered Mon–Fri.