Titans recruit: The day I nearly gave it away
Shannon Boyd is chasing a new start at the Gold Coast but not before revealing how close he came to quitting footy before Ricky ‘Sticky’ Stuart helped out. Brent O’Neill reports
HE looms as the Titans’ new front-row enforcer but former Test prop Shannon Boyd has revealed how close he came to walking away from footy.
Signed from Canberra on a four-year deal reportedly worth $2.4 million, the 26year-old received a stark introduction to life as a Gold Coast player with their first pre-season training session at Parkwood yesterday. But if not for an off-field change, it may never have happened.
Stuck behind the likes of David Shillington, Josh Papalii, Brett White, Dane Tilse and Tom Learoyd-Lahrs at the Raiders, the former under-20s prop considered quitting the game before the arrival of coach Ricky Stuart at the start of 2014.
Two years later, he would earn four Kangaroos caps as part of a victorious Four Nations squad. “I was pretty much done and then we got a new coach,” Boyd said in his first interview as a Titan.
“I went down to a trial in Canberra and got picked in the side and if it wasn’t for Ricky I wouldn’t have played, I was going to quit. I was about ready to give up and … I ended up playing first grade Round 1 that year.
“I always wanted to play footy. It was a fresh start and that sold it for me to stay and give it another crack. (Ricky) just said ‘pull your finger out or don’t bother being here’.”
Less than five years later, the chance for a “fresh start” also proved the catalyst for Boyd’s Coast move, with the 111-game Raider hopeful Titans coach Garth Brennan can help revive his representative career.
“I’d love to start playing rep footy again so I just want to have a big pre-season first and go from there. I think a fresh start is what I needed.
“I’d been in Canberra a long time and Garth seemed like an understanding and reasonable coach. He said it was a good bunch of boys up here, everyone got along well and they all enjoy each other so I thought it was a good opportunity to come up and try something different.
“It sounded like I was walking into a good place.”
Boyd, who took part in a series of 2km time trials with his new teammates, will be joined at training by fellow recruits Tyrone Peachey, Ryley Jacks and Tyrone Roberts in the coming weeks.