"We'd get in competitive shouts": Meet the "real" Ricky Stuart
Whether he's riding the pine sideline or pounding the perspex in the coach's box, Ricky Stuart looks a polarising figure. Meet the Real Ricky Stuart.
As white-bread suburban Canberra kids, we were a bit ... well, not scared of the Queanbeyan boys. But they were tough. Other side of the border. “Struggle Town”. Their footy players ran straight and didn’t seem to care. Their cricketers sledged like they hated you.
Our Woden Valley High played league against Karabar High in 1983 and some of their Year 10s turned up in full-blown Toranas. Some had beards. The in-goal at one end was hard-packed gravel, the ground shredded perhaps by those very Toranas. But when the ball was bouncing about in-goal it was the Queanbeyan kids diving for it, coming up all smiles and grazed, bleeding limbs. They were hard critters.
A heap of footy players came out of the town: Glenn Lazarus, David Furner, Matt Giteau, Brent Kite, Terry Campese. The latter’s uncle, David Campese, developed his evasive skills on Taylor Park, a ground later named David Campese Field.
And of course there was Ricky Stuart. He played league for Queanbeyan United and rugby for his school, famous St Edmund’s College. The brothers had seen Giteau, Furner and George Gregan. They’d seen Carlton legend Alex Jesaulenko. But ask any of them, they’ll tell you: Stuart was the greatest schoolboy footballer they’d ever seen.
Aged 20 he toured Argentina with the Wallabies, this pup from the poor cousin province, ACT. He returned, played some trials for Manly Marlins before he was poached by Canberra Raiders.
And from there, well ...
If Andrew Johns and Johnathan Thurston are equal top the list of Greatest Halfbacks There’s Ever Been, Stuart sits on the next rung in the post-War pantheon with Sterling, Langer, Holman, Smith, Mortimer, Raudonikis, Cronk. You’d be leaving out Alexander. Of the guys running around today he’d be equivalent of Nathan Cleary: if he doesn’t play, Canberra don’t win the premiership.
Stuart brought things to rugby league that even Wally Lewis couldn’t do: half-field spiral passes both sides of his body, the man could fling a wombat across Queanbeyan. Massive, thundering torpedo punts that sent tired forwards jogging long, hard yards backwards. His bombs rained upon fullbacks like abominations from space. He was experimenting, tooling about with different kicks, when Johns was in primary school. He was super-smart tactically. And he was ornery, Queanbeyan-tough. And competitive to the point of madness.
“He’s never been a good loser,” long-time mate Gary “Fritz” McDonnell once told me. “He just hates losing. Hates it. It’s what makes him such a prolific winner. He’s got a drive in him.
“We’d play pool at the Kingston Hotel for two bucks. You lose you pay for the next game. And Ricky would just about break cues if he’d lose. And it wasn’t for theatrics – he was that bloody disappointed he lost. Like, ropable.
“It talks to how competitive he was. He’d get beaten by a couple of knuckleheads playing for two bucks and take it to heart.”
McDonnell grew up watching his brother play against Stuart at St Edmund’s but didn’t meet him until 1991 when he was playing reserve grade for the Raiders. In 1992 they played their only game together – at Bruce Stadium versus Great Britain. There was a fight in the first scrum. McDonnell was sin-binned.
“After 10 minutes in the dressing shed I headed back on, passing ‘Stick’ in the tunnel going the other way. The Raiders were playing Parramatta the next day, and they wanted to wrap him in cotton wool,” McDonnell said.
The pair were something of an odd couple – the giant reserve grade front-rower called Fritz and the superstar halfback. But their friendship was borne of similar interests.
“We were usually the last ones home,” McDonnell said. “We both love a beer and a punt. It’s been a friendship formed over a few beers.”
Stuart moved to Sydney in 1997 to play for the Bulldogs while McDonnell has lived in Brisbane since 2002. But they’ve always kept in touch, “usually on the phone,” according to McDonnell.
“When he comes to town or I go to Canberra, he’s always up for a beer. Whenever they play in Brisbane or the Gold Coast, I’ll go along, get on the team bus, sit up in the coach’s box. The royal treatment. But that’s how he treats his mates. And he’s got a million mates like me.
“For whatever reason he’s a real love-him-or-hate-him kind of guy. And if you know him, chances are you love the bloke,” McDonnell said.
I first met Stuart at his golf day at Royal Canberra, the fund-raiser for his Ricky Stuart Foundation. I was doing a story about him for Inside Sport and heard he didn’t want to talk. I was half-expecting Cranky Ricky. But he was personable, friendly, and apologetic about not wanting to be quoted in the piece. If you met him, you’d tell people: yeah, nice fella, good bloke.
That evening in front of a thousand Canberra suits he was welcomed on stage as “the real Ricky”, the father and local whose foundation builds respite homes for kids with autism, like his little girl Emma. He made a fine speech, and choked up as he thanked people. Then he hurried off stage. All these people here, the love in the room, his little girl. Too much.
Stuart hadn’t wanted to be quoted for the Inside Sport yarn for fear it’d provide ammunition for his detractors, those odd, anonymous Twitter gibberers called “haters”. For there was a time if Stuart had said the Raiders jumper is predominantly lime green these hater types would’ve still lined up to disagree. As Darryl Brohman quipped on stage, “Ricky, your image stinks!” It was reference to the ‘look’ of Stuart on TV, in the coach’s box. An angry man, a “bad” loser.
For good or ill, Stuart is good story. Always has been. He’s a Wallaby and Kangaroo tourist. He’s won premierships, Origins, Tests, everything, as coach and player. He’s a hyper-competitive and compelling influence on this greatest game of all rugby league. Like his mate Craig Bellamy in the box, he is good TV.
And a good bloke to hang around at the pub, according to McDonnell
“Win or lose he’ll be the first bloke to the bar. He’s one of those blokes, he’s got to be first. He’s got to be the first one to shout. First to the bar.
“He and I used to have competitive shouts. He’d come back with 20 bourbon and Cokes, that’d be his shout, for all the boys. I’d come back with 25. He’d have to beat me.
“The hotelier [at Pandora’s], a bloke called Russell Ingram, had a bit to do with the Brumbies, he had a guard-rail at the pub for the staff to gain access. The only exemptions were me and Ricky. They didn’t want us to leave. We didn’t have to go outside to the ATM; they’d give us cash from the till and swipe cards. This is long before tap-n-go,” McDonnell said.
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