Drinkwater goes from building site in Sydney to brink of Wembley glory
Dragons half-back tells Sam Dean how he has revived his career after being let go by Leigh
As Josh Drinkwater will attest, life can move fast in rugby league. On the final Saturday of September last year, he was part of the Leigh Centurions side relegated from the Super League following defeat by Catalans Dragons. Two days later, he was told that his contract would be terminated. And within a week, he had packed up his things, moved back to Australia and begun the search for work.
He found it on a building site in Sydney, an hour-and-a-half ’s drive from his home on the Central Coast. In the heat of the Australian summer, Drinkwater would wake at 4am and, in his words, “drive down to Sydney to dig holes”. He would toil until around 4pm, and then go training with his part-time side before returning home.
“It was manual labour,” he told The Daily Telegraph. “Pushing wheelbarrows, digging holes. It was tough, being there at seven in the morning, covered in dirt. Some days I would get to training after being outside all day in 40-degree heat. You think to yourself, ‘Phwoar, can I keep doing this?’”
Fortunately for Drinkwater, he has not had to. At the end of April, seven months after he was cast out of professional rugby league, the half-back received a call from Catalans, the Super League side based in France who had consigned Drinkwater to unemployment last year.
Their own half-back, Luke Walsh, had been forced to retire through injury, and there was a hole in the squad that head coach Steve Mcnamara, the former England boss, needed to fill.
“The deal happened very quickly,” Drinkwater says. “I travelled down to Sydney to sign the contract and I rang Steve straight away. He said, ‘Right, I need you on a plane tomorrow’. So, I called my girlfriend and said: ‘You’re not going to be happy…’”
For the second time in the space of a few months, Drinkwater relocated to the other side of the world. This time, though, he is loving what he is doing, and today he will be his team’s key man in the Challenge Cup final at Wembley, where Catalans are hoping to beat Warrington Wolves to become the first non-british side to win the competition in its 122-year history.
Warrington are the heavy favourites, but with Drinkwater in their side Catalans have proved themselves more than capable of causing an upset.
They had lost nine out of 11 league games before the Australian’s arrival, but have since been one of the Super League’s most impressive teams, stunning St Helens, the runaway league leaders, in the Challenge Cup semi-final.
Drinkwater, 26, is too modest to say the turnaround is all down to him, but there can be no denying the size of his impact in Perpignan, or that he has been in the best form of his career since moving back from Sydney’s building sites. “It made me appreciate rugby league a lot more,” he says. “Looking back, it was probably the best thing that has happened to me, and I don’t think there is any coincidence that I have played the best footy of my career since that happened.
“I was always confident that I could come back and play at the highest level. I just knew it was going to be a tough route to get back there. It is one of those things in life. I just had to do it, put up with it. I didn’t play very good footy in my last year of Super League at Leigh and I think everyone knows that.
“Obviously, that’s why they decided to get rid of me. But I always thought, given the right
environment and type of style, I could play at the highest level.”
The success of Mcnamara’s side this season has ignited passions for rugby league across the Channel. Emmanuel Macron, the French president, has written a letter of support to Catalans, saying that “all of France” is behind them, while Drinkwater expects Perpignan to go “berserk” if they become the first side to take the trophy abroad. “Even just driving around the streets, I have a club car that says Catalans and has dragons on it, and there are people beeping at you, waving at you, wishing you good luck,” he says. “The fans over in Perpignan are nuts. They’re crazy. They’re very passionate and I love playing in front of them. It would be great to take the trophy home because the place will be going berserk.”
About 5,000 Catalans supporters are expected to make their way to Wembley, 11 years after their first appearance in the Challenge Cup final. The French side lost that day, to St Helens, but this weekend they plan to continue exceeding expectations. “We have belief,” says Drinkwater, who has never played at Wembley. “It is going to come down to those little special moments.
“Rugby league is a roller-coaster. I am just grateful that I got the opportunity to come here.”