Steve Kilgallon Park pitch to NRL hero
Reality show takes league rookies and offers them an NRL deal – including a Kiwi contender desperate for a second chance, writes.
Reece Joyce sat in the lounge at his home in Te Kauwhata watching the Footy Show when they began talking about a new reality show called The NRL Rookie ,in which a park footballer would be plucked from anonymity and handed a professional contract.
‘‘I think I got a bit of a smirk on my face,’’ he recalls. ‘‘So my partner [Annelise Kiely] said ‘why don’t you apply for it?’’’
Others among the 1200 eager applicants, from Vanuatu to Russia to South Africa to the US, delivered audition videos of them climbing coconut trees and flickpassing the fruit away, or running through brick walls.
Joyce didn’t even film anything: he’d run out of time before the application deadline.
‘‘We were sitting there one night and my partner handed me the laptop and said ‘away you go’,’’ he says.
‘‘She left me by myself and said ‘don’t come to bed until it’s done’. It took me about three hours. She came back down and I was still on the same page as when she had left, so she began telling me what to put in there.’’ But it was enough. Joyce, who had quit league at 18, turned to rugby at 21 and was then playing for the Bombay club, was summoned to a trial at Mt Smart Stadium for 34 New Zealand aspirants, and did enough in skills and fitness tests to be called up for the first televised episode.
That screens on Tuesday on Duke, with the final 28 contenders meeting the show’s selection and coaching panel of three celebrated former players: sometime Australian captain Brad Fittler, Adrian Lam, who led Papua New Guinea at two World Cups as captain and two as coach, and Mark Geyer, a famously combustible forward in his day. Before the episode ends, the 28 will have become 14.
Joyce and Geyer found an instant connection.
Geyer’s highlights reel is a hightackling, in-your-face-yelling evocation of the 1980s wildman league player. He was at times wayward, particularly as a young footballer coming to terms with the early death of his Penrith teammate and best mate, Ben Alexander.
Now completely bald, but compensating with designer frames and yes, some threads of string around his wrist, Geyer says he’s a changed man.
‘‘It’s do as I say, not do as I did,’’ he chortles. ‘‘I think I’ve mellowed a bit at my age and now I’ve got kids of my own, I took on the approach of being the fatherfigure of the group.’’
But he remembers all too well what it was like.
‘‘What drew me to this show was the fact most of these blokes were looking for a second chance,’’ he says. ‘‘I myself was given a couple of them in my career, some of which I didn’t take advantage of, but one I did.
‘‘You get your favourites, and I was drawn to a couple of kids – the ones who were a bit like I was – and to see them go was a bit sad. You’ve invested in these kids and we are basically playing with their futures.’’
Among those he liked was Joyce. ‘‘He was definitely back for a second chance, and he didn’t disappoint.’’
‘‘I knew MG’s background – I’d seen a story about it – and it felt for me like we had a lot of similar struggles we had to go through. It gave us a close bond straight away,’’ Joyce says.
Joyce grew up in South Auckland – ‘‘I probably didn’t have the easiest of upbringings,’’ he says – and he soon realised his life was at a crossroads.
‘‘I got myself in a little bit of trouble when I was younger – nothing too big, some slaps on the wrist here and there, and I got to 16 or 17 and realised I couldn’t go down that path. I think it was either fall down the wrong side of the tracks or try to make something of myself.
‘‘As I got older I slowly realised that there could be something better in life for me and that was through rugby league."I wasn’t in the best frame of mind,’’ he adds.
‘‘I had a few mates I got up to mischief with and had a few beers with.’’ Then his partner fell pregnant. ‘‘And I had to stop being a little adolescent.’’
That included quitting football with his local Otara Scorpions.
Now, with three children aged 7, 5, and 4, he says, ‘‘It’s very busy, but that’s where you get your mental toughness: if you can’t do it at home, you can’t do it on the pitch.’’
When he finally returned to the field, it was about rediscovering his passion for the sport, and finding time for himself again. That slowly turned into a deeper ambition. ‘‘It’s my second and last crack at it,’’ he says.
There’s a tough edge to The NRL Rookie that the standard reality show lacks. A televised trial game in episode one is used to cull the contenders, and one injures his ankle in the first tackle. ‘‘That’s why it’s reality TV,’’ says Geyer.
‘‘It could happen to him in a normal everyday life situation at any footy club.’’
The standard, Geyer says, was much better than he expected, and the variety of what they found: among the first 28 are an English bobsledder (‘‘who looked like Tarzan but we thought might play like Jane, actually did play like Tarzan which caught us by surprise’’), a rugby sevens star and an American NFL player, as well as three Kiwis.
Each week, the contenders take part in a challenge – such as jumping off a high tower or running up sanddunes – with the best earning immunity, while after a weekly trial match, the remainder publicly nominate the three weakest performers among their number, and Fittler chooses one to pack his kitbag and go home.
Filming is down to the final four, but by the time the run ends, one will be left – with all 16 NRL club chief executives invited to a live auction for his playing services.
Without giving away the ending, Joyce is back home working for a Pokeno civil engineering company but has returned to league and is playing halfback for one of the country’s best sides, the Papakura Sea Eagles, who presently top the fierce Auckland Fox competition with seven wins from seven. ‘‘You’ve got to start somewhere and playing in the hardest club competition is the best way for me to push through to my dream,’’ he says. ‘‘I’m loving it at the moment. I want to open doors for myself.’’