Webcke Meets His Fears Head-on

Sydney Morning Herald

Saturday September 16, 2006

Andrew Stevenson

APPROACHING his final minutes in the NRL, there's a skinny little guy inside Shane Webcke who is still, after 12 years and nearly 300 games in first grade, trying to find his way out of the armour-clad body that holds him prisoner.

Shoulders like an ironbark strainer post, a barrel chest that brooks no resistance and a scowl that says you're risking your life if you stand between me and the bowl of lollies - Webcke is the prototype of the contemporary prop. And he's still feeling the fear, driven by the desire to prove himself worthy.

"It's quite natural, when you look up and you see four or five huge blokes you're about to run into - especially when you're taking the kick-off. It's pretty natural to at least be worried," Webcke explains.

"No matter who you are and what your reputation is, there's someone out there who can take you apart. We all know that. Most players would acknowledge that fear exists; good players overcome it.

"If you can harness it, overcome and go through the other side of it, then that's very empowering. That allows you to do things you're not entitled to."

Like survive at the top for so long. "I still feel to this day, and leading in to what might be my last game, that I have to prove to people I'm worthy of being here," says the prop.

No one else - especially not the opponents he's battered and rammed - needs any convincing of his right to belong, but Webcke's still doing his best to please.

"It's a tremendous debt of gratitude I owe the Broncos for making me, I hope, a better bloke as well as a better footballer," he says. "And a tremendous motivation has always been if I could please Wayne [Bennett]. I don't say that in a teacher's pet way, but here is a bloke who gave me an opportunity no one else was going to and gave me things in my life I never thought I would have."

It's hard to think Bennett doesn't owe the big prop plenty in return. To send him into battle must be a coach's delight: how many times have you seen him sat on his square behind?

But aggression in Webcke has never meant elbows or fists. He says he's never thumped anyone and reckons "if you want to stand toe-to-toe with someone, go and be a boxer".

"My job is not to grab some bloke early on and punch him so that we suddenly feel better about ourselves," he says. "A lot of what used to happen in the game was thuggery - blokes being hit off the ball with elbows. Where's the courage, the manliness in that? I detest it and I'm pleased it's not part of the game anymore."

Look at the props he admires - reluctantly, he singles out Luke Bailey, Ruben Wiki and Jason Ryles from the pack. "They're not necessarily the blokes who produce the biggest hits or make the best runs, they are just uncompromising and unrelenting in everything they do."

For years, Webcke's plan for life after football was simple. The day after he retired, he'd jump in his truck and head down to the farm without looking back. Then he called it quits and everything changed. Webcke has sold his farm and will chase a dollar while his rugby league profile remains high.

"I had it all organised, to go back to the place I had just out of Warwick, to live there, have the kids go to school and I thought I'd sneak down to Brisbane a couple of days a week to supplement our income," he reflects.

Two things happened. The phone kept ringing with offers - and he realised how much money he needed to establish a serious farming operation. "I'd move my family up there and then I'd be down here five days a week. Where was the sense in that?

"And I came to the realisation that it's not about spending one million dollars, it's not about spending two - it's about spending six or seven. And I don't have it at this point of time."

Money is a recurring theme in the Shane Webcke story. "I grew up in a family that had everything we needed except we had nothing. You know people who say you don't have to have money to be happy - that's obviously because they've always had it," he says.

The desire for financial stability has seen him buy a string of properties - and sent him to work in a bank when he left school. "It was never for me," he says. "I hated being there. And every day I got out of bed to go to work because I had to. It taught me discipline and it made me hard-nosed."

That hard nose would never allow Webcke to underestimate the Knights tonight. Especially not with Andrew Johns at the wheel. Which brings us back to the fear. "Just please, stay away from me," Webcke jokes. "Just go the other way. I don't care what you do, just don't do it near me. It's the standard nightmare for front-rowers."

© 2006 Sydney Morning Herald

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