By STEVE MASCORD
TO someone with only a passing interest in rugby league, it’s difficult to see how Craig Field would annoy anyone.
Little halfback, used to play for South Sydney, goes OK. Throws a nice pass and all that, going well so far this year for Manly.
That’s if you only watch the footy every now and then. The thing about this 24-year-old is that the more some people have to do with him, the more he frustrates and even infuriates them.
Watch him every two or three weeks these last few years at Souths, and you’ll have noticed him blowing up at teammates a little too often. When he shakes his head and remonstrates with himself once, you feel sorry for him.
By the 15th time, you’ve run out of sympathy. And before you know it, you’re watching him every week and reading everything he says in the paper and you either deeply empathise with this misunderstood, under-exposed genius or positively hate a cocksure little inner-city loudmouth.
The question being: which one is the real Craig Field. “The bottom line with Craig,” says his former coach at Souths, Ken Shine, “is that he can play.
“Some people handle ability or talent in different ways. Craig lacks maturity, he says whatever is on his mind, sometimes it seems like he doesn’t care who he hurts.
“I consider him to be a friend, even though he’s been less than gracious to me on occasions.”
Craig Field’s switch from South Sydney to Manly is intriguing on a number of levels. On the post-Super League “vision” level, it represents a polarisation of talent within the ARL, the rich (Manly) getting richer and the poor (Souths) getting poorer.
On a footballing level, Field has the chance to prove he really is as good as his proponents – including himself – think he is. You might be able to shine at Souths, Sonny Jim, but let’s see how you go at Manly.
But there’s another reason why people with intimate experience of Craig Field, the bloke, will be watching closely this year.
Put simply, they want to know how he’ll handle being a Manly player. Being a Manly player doesn’t just mean being in the team that won the comp last year.
It means following the Bozo mantra, taking the old “don’t give them anything to use as motivation” school of thought to ridiculous extremes.
When one Manly player told a couple of reporters after a semi-final last year he had no comment on the game because he’d got in trouble for what he said the week before, the response from the journos was instantaneous.
“What did you say last week?”
Not only is Field not known to toe the party line, he is steadfastly apolitical. The first time he questions the credentials of another team – even after the Sea Eagles win 104-0 – should inspire an interesting conversation between coach and halfback.
God forbid him ever questioning the credentials of his own team, as he did on a few occasions with the Rabbitohs.
The term “wears his heart on his sleeve” could have been coined for him. Field looks you in the eye when you ask a question, but glances around the room when answering, as if not to be distracted from his self-absorbtion.
We meet at the Manly Leagues Club bistro. I had been there the day before, waiting, but when I had called him on his mobile he called back, saying: “sorry I didn’t contact you. My grandfather died at the weekend and there are, you know, things to do. Yeah, tomorrow’s fine.”
He fends off my condolences as we move to find a seat the next day. “These things happen; suffering,” he says.
It is only later that I discover he may have had other things on his mind. He had been arrested for exposing himself at the races the previous Saturday – and was about to be fined at $10,000 by the club. More of that later.
Field seems to like the spotlight, to feel comfortable answering questions and understand the fascination others may have for him.
When Super League was in legally-enforced hibernation, the only way the News Limited-paid players earned their juicy cheques was to show up at Galaxy’s Ultimo headquarters and be guests on Fox Sports programs.
Ian Roberts, Simon Gillies et al would troop into Premier Sports Network (which became Fox Sports) while ARL men Mark Coyne and Jarrod McCracken chatted about the weekend games on Optus Vision.
But Craig Field was one of the few ARL players to make an appearance, free-of-charge, on Premier Sports. “I live in town and don’t have anything on,” he told the producer.
He also gives the impression of someone who, if he didn’t play football, would be obsessed by it anyway. He has a keen sense of his own public image, often referring to himself in the third person. “Craig Field” gets six or seven mentions in our interview, none of them from me.
So what does Craig Field have to say about this “Craig Field”? Simple: nothing against Souths but he’s glad to be away from the place.
He loves playing with Test players, loves being with Bozo, loves winning games. “It so much easier playing with so many champion players, not being the major person in the team,” basically sums it up. “It’s so relieving.”
Field is still eating his roast pork when this line of interrogation is pretty much exhausted. OK, let’s try another tact. Let’s hit him with some things people say about Craig Field, and what Craig Field thinks of them.
THAT HE HAS BEEN TRYING TO LEAVE SOUTHS FOR THREE YEARS. True. “Before (former coach, then manager) Alan Jones was there I was trying to get out of my contract – they had an option on me – to go to a couple of other clubs.
“I probably tried three times to leave.
“I’m sure they’d (Souths) be upset with me. But when it comes down to making decisions for your career, it’s individual. It’s what you see when you look back after you’re finished. You’re not in football forever.
“When you look back, you want to see you made the right decision.
“Sure, Souths is a great traditional club. They looked after me and gave me an opportunity in the rugby league world. Do I want to look back and say I stayed at South Sydney for ten years because of loyalty?
“Where’s the loyalty shown now in our game?”
THAT OTHER PLAYERS AT SOUTHS DISLIKED HIM BECAUSE HE MADE IT CLEAR HE WAS THERE UNDER SUFFERANCE. Sort of. “I suppose they were a bit … a couple were a bit colder to me. That’s fine, I can understand that.
“I’ve got five or six (Souths players) I still keep in touch with and occasionally go and have a few beers with. A lot of people who know me personally know the stuff that was in the paper last year was blown out of context.
“If I had something to say to someone, I’d say it to them personally.
“I just didn’t like losing, mate. No-one likes losing. It’s just the way I showed it. Maybe it was a bit of immaturity. The way I dealt with it was probably wrong but I look back on it now and say I’ve learnt from it and I just get on with it.”
THAT HE CAN’T TACKLE: “I think, because it’s such a professional, great defensive side (Manly), you don’t want to miss tackles. But you are going to miss tackles, there’s nothing you can do about that. No-one’s super human.
“I wouldn’t be playing first grade if I couldn’t tackle. It’s not a matter of me not being able to tackle. It’s like, if a player’s got the line in front of him, someone throws him the ball and he drops it. It’s just a spur of the moment thing.
“I’m not really worried about my defence. At Souths I was probably running out of the line and trying to break things down before they happen. Here I’ve just got to wait, be patient and have confidence in the inside and outside players and they’ll have confidence in me.”
1995 MATCH-FIXING ALLEGATIONS: “That was all blown out of context. I don’t really know the ins and outs of that. I was one of the accused. I had nothing to hide and I can still hold my head up and say none of the other players did either. In those sort of things, a big thing like that, if something ever happened I’m sure you’d get caught.
“There’s no way in the world you could do it and get away with it.
“It was thoroughly investigated. I think it was just a matter of bookmakers being stung or being told something.”
THAT SOUTHS IN GENERAL ARE UNDESIRABLE SCALLYWAGS: “I remember, I was 17 when I first came into the grade scene. The things that guys used to do on their weekends and stuff, now you’d be hung.
(One player at the time was rumour to favour gay bashing as a weekend hobby).
“That’s probably the biggest change I’ve seen. “Players seem to get away with a lot more at Souths than they do at any other club. That’s probably because so many people are bought up in the inner city, that sort of knockabout image is there.
“Everyone knows everyone’s business in the inner-city. That’s just the way it is.”
Which brings us to the racecourse incident, something which Field doesn’t go out of his way to tell me about. He doesn’t tell me at all.
Yet he does spout jingoistic theories about behaving off the field. “You’ve got a responsibility not to get yourself into certain situations. There’s nothing you can do about it, you’re in the public eye and you have to stay as far away from trouble as you can.”
Obviously, there’s only. so far away Craig can stay. While it would be unfair to compare him to the fiery and controversial Mark Geyer, he and Field share some traits.
For one, they are both surprisingly eloquent. Field talks in the sort of quickfire, staccato way that fellow Rabbitoh types George Piggins and Craig Coleman have made their trademark.
Those who’ve known him for a while say Craig Field’s footballing talent doesn’t just have a profound effect on his personality, it is his personality. Without football, Field would be a completely different person, almost certainly someone without the good prospects he now enjoys.
(He’s just moved into a luxury northside house with his fiance) And like Geyer, Field has announced on several occasions that he has “got his life together” only to be hurled into controversy once more.
At the beginning of last season, he told the Daily Telegraph that he had been immature in 1995, when – the paper reported – he “threatened to walk out when stripped of the first-grade captaincy” and “had a fallout with coach Ken Shine”.
Yet by the time 1996 was over, he had:
* Been sacked to reserve grade for criticising his team-mates after a loss to Canterbury and saying he couldn’t wait to leave the club;
* Been reprimanded by the club board for not wearing a sponsor’s logo during a television appearance, and subsequently stood down or was sacked (depending on who you believe) as captain;
* Accused referee Mick Lewis of costing his side victory against Western Suburbs. And despite similar claims this year, the racecourse incident still happened
Shine says being a star athlete is just plain hard for some people to cope with. “Wally Lewis apparently used to have trouble with his coaches,” says Shine, who took over from Alan Jones at Souths three years ago. “Craig is nowhere near as great a player as him but maybe it’s a bit of the same thing.
“I think, even if it was subconscious, there was some animosity towards Craig from the other players because of some things he said.
“He’s a good little bloke and, like I said, I consider him a friend.
“I see where he says he’s happy being coached by Fulton. That’s fine, we’re all trying to improve ourselves, me included.
“But he also said somewhere that he had to coach Souths on occasions. That’s bullshit. When he was captain, I tried to put him in leadership situations and do some coaching through him but any coach does that.
“That’s the only way he did any coaching.”
You can see how Field, the restless ball of energy, and Shine, nature’s gentleman, would have had a love-hate relationship. Shine does right thing by Field, Field says something hurtful about Shine, Shine is dismayed, Field apologises, all is fine until the cycle starts again.
Of course, now the cycle is broken. “I enjoyed working with him,” says Shine. “But we’re doing fine without Craig Field, no-one is irreplaceable.”
Field is asked during our interview whether he feels Shine is being set up for a fall by Souths, with former Souths half Craig Coleman now reserve grade boss and seemingly destined to replace him at any time. The impish half replies that such scenarios are just the way of the world.
“He’s got some great young talent there but when you’re playing sides like Manly and all them (sic) sort of sides, with so many internationals, it’s pretty hard to coach against those sort of sides,” says
“When you do get beaten, you’re the worst coach in the world. He’s fighting a losing battle if you ask me. Craig Coleman, he’s South Sydney’s favourite son, it was only a matter of time before he did come into the coaching ranks.”
And that’s that. I didn’t ask Field if he was religious, but he clearly believes in natural selection. And he’s gonna survive, no matter what.
Likewise, he appreciates the tutelage of Alan Jones but adds: “He probably pampers players too much. He looks after them, tries to keep them out of trouble.
“I think that’s probably a bad aspect of Alan Jones, he was too friendly. He’d come in after you were beaten by 40 points and praise you.”
Field has now well and truly finished his meal, and squints a little at the northern beaches sun coming through the window. His future’s so bright he should be wearing shades.
Certainly, he has astounded observers with how quickly he has fitted in to the Manly side. Any halfback with a normal level of humility would be somewhat intimidated at first by being pitched into such a powerful line-up.
The standard settling-in period for a new half at a gun club involves him shovelling the ball slavishly to the superstars outside him until the coach or team-mates encourage him to take on the defence himself.
Not Field. He’ll run the ball rather than giving it to Terry Hill or Craig Innes without a second thought. And he scored two tries in the second round against St George to give his confidence another little push over the top.
The result is that Cliff Lyons looks like playing the entire season from the bench. Field is neither a nuggety, tough warrior around the rucks, ala Tom Raudonikis, nor a magnificently gifted with truly elevated vision, ala Ricky Stuart. What he is is a potent combination of both.
Just as those who he would call “death riders” predicted his personality would not fit in on the peninsula, there are those who predicted his downfall as a footballer too.
He misses one on one tackles. How can he fit into the world’s best defensive side? He doesn’t have a long kicking game. How can the premiers tolerate a halfback who can’t do that?
But while doubts over his personal compatibility with Sea Eagle culture remain, he is fast eliminating those who doubt his ability to play football with 12 other top liners.
Field has given the Sea Eagles a level of incisiveness at the scrum base they perhaps lacked. Toovey would take the ball to the line and off-load and make 30 tackles, Lyons would confound defences with his sublime ball distribution but Field goes through, around and past defenders to give Manly’s attack an added dimension.
If he does have any weaknesses, the premiers are playing too well for them to be exposed. Perhaps that may change in September but Field is doing everything asked of him right now.
“A couple of weeks ago there was a thing in the paper saying Balmain were going to be after me,” Field recalls, grinning. “I thought that was sort of funny, actually.
“If they’re going to go after me, what are they going to do about the 12 other champion players that are international players?
“I’m just thrilled at the opportunity to play with so many good players. It’s not downgrading the players I did play with at South Sydney. They were good blokes. But blokes I’m playing with now, eight or seven of them are internationals. That’s a different standard of play.
“I mean, I’m just a little pup in the kennel. There’s plenty of big top dogs on top of me.”
But is that good Craig? Or does it mean that Manly will end up like the ARL’s Australian team – real good but with no-one to play against? At first, he takes the question personally.
“If players were happy where they were, they wouldn’t leave other places. Every player I know who’s ever come to Manly has said they’re not going to leave. They want to stay and finish their career here.”
But what about the big picture. Isn’t you going to Souths, David Barnhill and Scott Gourley to Sydney City, everyone else to Parra, isn’t it stuffing the competition?
“How can you say that after the Crushers beat Parramatta? The Crushers have just thrown blokes together. You can’t take things for granted.
“It’s hard to say, football’s a funny game.”
Oops. Time to move on when that line gets a run. Perhaps the thing about Craig Field which upsets people is not comments like “At least I won’t have to worry about the 12 other players in my team like I do now”, made after the Canterbury loss last year.
What upsets people about Craig Field’s belief that he is superior player and belongs in better company is that he’s right and he’s proving it every week in maroon and white.
If there’s one thing worse than cockiness, it’s justifiable cockiness. But Manly encourage neither variety. They expect their players to say “hats off to (fill in name of hapless opponent)” and leave it at that.
“I’ve said things in the past that I’ve later regretted,” Field admits as my audience with him draws to a close. “I’ve always been brought up to speak your mind but sometimes it’s better just to bite your lip.
“I feel like I’m on top of it now, I’m enjoying my football, I’m enjoying life. I don’t need to go out and say anything about anyone, I don’t need to put people down at the moment.
“If you’ve still got the microscope on me … if they want to judge me, that’s fine. But I don’t think I have anything to prove to anyone.
“My goal in my life is to try and win a premiership and play representative football and after that, if I succeed or don’t succeed, I can get on with my life and then I can party.
“I know now that, being able to come here with Manly’s faith in signing me, I don’t have to prove myself to anyone. They’re the premiership side.”
Field still has some work to do to fulfil Jones’ March, 1994 prediction that he would play for Australia. For a start, he has Andrew Johns and Geoff Toovey ahead of him.
But Ken Shine reckons he’s got other, equally high, hurdles too. “Someone said ‘you are a man when you start acting like one’,” the Souths coach says. “When Craig does that, he’ll play for Australia.”
This story appeared in Inside Sport in May 1997
