From mall rat to Kangaroo: the evolution of Greg Bird
May 7, 2008
The Sharks hard head has done plenty of growing up but will never lose his mongrel, writes Andrew Stevenson.
Greg Bird is emphatic when he says he didn't wake up one day and think, 'I'm making a goose of myself'. No, it didn't happen like that. Everyone else might have thought he was a mug lair and most people might think he's pulled his head in from where it was a couple of years ago. But there was no dramatic moment when a boy began to be a man.
"I had to learn to change my ways and I sort of did that all on my own," argues the man ready to fill Darren Lockyer's shoes for Friday night's Test against New Zealand at the SCG. "It's not that I actually sat down one day and thought to myself, 'I'm an idiot and I need to pull my head in'. I still do some pretty stupid things but I think it's just a maturing thing. It's more of a process than one single moment."
The process appears to have worked. He's captained his club side and made the step up to representative football look easy in the last year. First game at five-eighth for NSW? Man of the match. First game at five-eighth for Australia? Another gong. Lockyer goes down, cue Bird.
And no small bird, either. Bird carries nearly 20 kilograms more into the game than Lockyer, all packed on a stocky frame beneath a head that looks as it if has been hewn from a block of granite. Of his Test debut in the 58-0 drubbing of the Kiwis last October, Bird says: "I sort of had a pretty good game last year but it was one game and I didn't want to be known as a one-hit wonder. I can't wait to get out there and tear in."
It's a long way from being just another kid with potential, albeit with a heap of mongrel, who hung around shopping centres in his (ample) spare time. He made first grade and headlines with equal ease, with a lengthy suspension for kneeing an opponent helping earn him an unwanted rap as a cheap-shot merchant.
But first grade seemed to be about the best he could expect, unless he found another gear on the field and a way of controlling the fire within.
"I played the game pretty hard and I crossed the line a few times, but as you play more and more first grade you learn to play hard but stay on the right side of the law," he explains.
They key was not dousing the flame but building a sturdy frame to control it.
"I'd never have made it to this stage if I didn't have that fire in my belly. That's the type of player I am, that's the style of football I play. It was just learning how to control it, learning how to play with it - by the rules," he says
"But, to be honest, I wouldn't change too much - that's the living and learning process. If I didn't go through that, I don't know whether I'd be here now."
In those days, Bird shared a house with another Cronulla firebrand, forward Paul Gallen - not that the maverick forward tried to knock any sense into the youngster. "He wouldn't listen to me," Gallen says. "If I'd tried to tell him, he would have done the opposite, I think. He's just grown up. [When] he moved in with me a couple of years ago and he was just a kid, he was going out, hanging out at the mall. He's just matured as a person and being more mature off the field has helped him on the field as well."
The other key event in his footballing life was the arrival of Australia coach Ricky Stuart at the Sharks. "I think you've got to be not just comfortable with playing first-grade football," Bird says. "I maybe fell into that trap a couple of years back. When Ricky came on board with the Sharks … he's taken my game to the next level and really changed my attitude.
"His intensity is probably a big part of it - that and his knowledge of the game; he's done just about everything in it. Someone who's done so much is always going to be able to tell you things to improve your game, things that can improve you as a person, on your attitude to life and to football."
Gallen has seen the same process at work from the outside. "I think Ricky Stuart has had a big hand in it," he says. "Ricky shows a lot of confidence and faith in him, and a lot of players need that. Birdy has certainly repaid him with his form on the field.".
The confidence was on show again this week. Bird made the Test side at lock but with the captain out he went to No.6 and no one questioned his elevation. "He'll be fine," Gallen says. "He's played two rep games at five-eighth and got man of the match both times. He doesn't let pressure get to him."
