Scrawny kid who became a footy legend

PEOPLE thought Kevin Walters was joking but the message was serious.

When Cameron Smith first played State of Origin back in 2003 he was “a scrawny kid ... and he still is.’’

Therein lies the truly magical storyline behind one of rugby league’s greatest careers.

When Cameron Smith started his Origin career people said he looked like a bank teller who went to war. Perhaps his greatest achievement was coming back from the war still looking like a bank teller.

Of all his achievements – records, premierships, trophies – the one that makes the jaw drop is how the “scrawny kid’’ went the distance.

There he sat before the cameras, the man who has made more tackles than anyone else in rugby league, who has touched the ball 2000 times more than anyone in Origin, with no scratch on his face.

Nor was there a tell- tale limp. In a game becoming dominated by Incredible Hulks he proved that you don’t have to have the build to star in The Avengers Infinity War to make it to the top.

It is an achievement he can be proud of and a message the game should cherish ... you don’t have to be the biggest, the fastest or the strongest to be the best. sign of a

Smith’s story remains a monument to virtues of the game’s purest yet sadly declining breeding ground – backyard football.

Fittingly he mentioned his upbringing playing football in his back yard at Logan where game after game, day after day he conditioned his body and his brain for so many of the challenges the game would later throw at him.

By playing a million backyard games he learnt not sim- ply how to tackle but how not to tackle and how to be tackled. When to fight a tackle and when to fold. When to pass. When to run.

By the time he reached the top his game was as instinctive as touch typing.

Now that he is gone from Origin forever you wonder where the game will find another like him, because had he relived his school years today he may have spent his afternoon indoors playing on com-