QLD Game 1 Origin Team

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Anthony Ryan, chief executive of charity Youngcare, tells a story that sums up the selflessness of Andrew McCullough.
The sort of altruistic attitude on which State of Origin and the players who take part in it are built. Seven years ago, Ryan was operating vans to feed the homeless in Brisbane when he received a phone call from Brisbane Broncos chief executive Paul White.
At the time, White was in the throes of disciplining four players including McCullough and Queensland teammate Ben Hunt after a night on the tiles ended with the pair in the watch-house.
He called Ryan hoping to give the players a dose of perspective.
“We had a skeleton staff doing horrendous coffee — probably the worst in Australia — and cooked a few snags on the barbecue,” Ryan told The Weekend Australian.
“They were just excuses to create a dialogue for homeless people who were doing it tough in Brisbane.
“That week they (the Broncos) were supposed to be going to Perth for the game. He (White) said I have stood the boys down, they are not going to Perth, they are devastated and as a result I want to get them to do something that gives them some perspective on life.
“I said we can do it, but there are no cameras, no journalists, no cameras. He said that is exactly what we want, this is about them.
“Ben and Andrew were excellent. Andrew got coffee and went and sat down next to one of the hardest and more difficult characters on the street.
“Off to the side, he stayed with him for two hours. The players would then go back to Paul’s house afterwards and Paul’s family would have dinner with them.
“That happened for four weeks, every Tuesday and Thursday. After four weeks I shook their hands and said, ‘thanks guys’. Both Andrew and Ben said, ‘this has been really good for us, can we come back next week?’
“They kept coming back. A couple of months went by and then out of the blue I ran into Andrew. He was with a friend of his and he saw we were under the pump.
“He said, ‘can I come over and help you out’. He came every now and then after that. The one that really got me was that once leading into Christmas, and I don’t know how he knew, we were doing something near one of the parks at Roma Street.
“You literally get smashed by hundreds of people. He has just turned up unannounced. Next thing I am looking over there and he is behind the barbecue cooking.
“He didn’t even say g’day. He was doing it for the right reasons. He was doing it because he enjoyed it, he knew he got something out of it and he was doing it because, out of the spotlight, he was making a deliberate decision to do something for others.
“It was just impressive.”
McCullough will make his Origin debut at the MCG next week, stepping into the No 9 jersey vacated by one of the game’s legends, Cameron Smith.
He has been patiently biding his time, waiting for an opportunity to achieve something he dreamt about as a young kid in the Queensland town of Dalby.
His father Graeme was a rugby league player but his mum Wendy initially made Andrew play soccer. Their son dug in his heels.
Before Origin games, his sisters would conduct mock interviews with Andrew as he predicted the outcome and star players.
When he reached the age of seven, Wendy caved in. So began a rugby league career that will reach its zenith next week.
“The girls used to interview him — ‘what do you think Andrew, who is going to be winning the game, who is the best player, who do you like today’,” Wendy said.
“He cried when (Queensland) lost. Without any prompting from us Andrew always wanted to watch the football. That has been his big pleasure and his big interest.
“He is grounded. He rings his dad every couple of days and organises weekends with his old Dalby friends.
“He remembers who he is and where it all started, who were his mates then and that sort of thing.”
There have been challenges along the way but the unassuming McCullough has gritted his teeth and determinedly ploughed on.
He has battled injury, the most serious last year when a knee injury prematurely ended his season and cost him any chance of making the Kangaroos squad for the World Cup as a back-up to Smith.
An elbow injury earlier this year looked to have cost him any hope of playing Origin. McCullough came back weeks ahead of schedule and then Smith made the momentous decision to retire from representative rugby league.
McCullough stepped into the breach, just like he did that night when he took charge of the barbecue and satisfied the hunger of some of Brisbane’s less fortunate.
Ryan was sitting in a coffee shop in Brisbane this week writing an email to White when he received the call from The Weekend Australian.
“I was saying that decision you made all that time ago, would you ever have thought Andrew McCullough would be starting in State of Origin,” Ryan said.
“I think those times can be real channelling moments in people’s life. If he goes to Perth, who knows what would have happened.
“But it definitely had an impact on him. He is a guy that is no-frills and doesn’t need the accolades, but what he believes is right he will always pursue that.
“His integrity is extraordinary and there is no ego to him that I can see. When you are exposed to something you have two choices — you can pat yourself on the back and move on, or you can be scarred by it and decide ‘what am I going to do?’
“His choice was to keep coming back rather than say ‘job done, experience done’. I believe that is pretty special.”

Brent Read in the Australian.
https://www.theaustralian.com.au/sp...h/news-story/28022903fdb2e9d388c2faf295ab5854

 

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Good read from Read !