State of Origin rugby league promotions often revolve around the use of the word “hate” but one of the best to have played the game, Brett Kenny, reckons the “hate” business is over-rated.
Brett, who played 17 Origin matches for New South Wales and is probably the only Blues five-eighth to at least hold his own against Queensland’s Wally Lewis (he has an 8-4 winning record in 12 games directly opposed to the “King”), remembers fierce rivalry with but no hate for the Maroons.
“No, mate, I didn’t hate them,” he says. “I ended up pretty good mates with Wally.
“Sure, you play hard but once the game is over you get to know the blokes on the other side and enjoy their company.
“I went on two Kangaroo tours (1982 and 1986) and got along really well with Queenslanders like Gene Miles, Greg Dowling and Mark Murray. They were good blokes.”
Brett is now 65 and living at The Entrance in NSW and is not one of the 60-pluses who is looking forward to retirement. He is still working for a company which specialises in employment for people with minor disabilities and is keen to keep going.
“Retirement isn’t all that attractive to me,” he said. “If I wasn’t out working, what would I be doing? You can only play so much golf.
“I spoke to my dad (Alan, 85) about it and he said retirement sounded good but it wasn’t all it was cracked up to be.
“I’ll keep going as long as I can.”
Brett also keeps active with regular walks and plays golf when he can and is a regular on Fox Sports’ top-rating rugby league show NRL 360 as well as being a popular guest speaker and sports events.
Most fair-minded rugby league fans, Queenslanders included, believe Brett should be seriously considered as the next rugby league “Immortal”, an elite group that already includes his playing peers Lewis and Mal Meninga.
After all, Brett was a four-time premiership player with Parramatta (and achieved the unique feat of scoring two tries in three consecutive grand finals), played on two undefeated Kangaroo tours, played more than 330 first-grade games, was the first Australian to win the man-of-the-match award in the English Challenge Cup final and won the Golden Boot as the world’s best player in 1985.
That was 41 years ago and was possibly the only time the man they called “Bert” got into any “strife”.
During the 1985 Australian summer a lot of Australian stars were attracted to the English competition and Brett joined Wigan, who made the Challenge Cup final a Hull team containing his Parramatta teammate Peter Sterling.
Kenny became the first Australian to win the Lance Todd Trophy for the man-of-the-match but it was what he did with his hands before and after the match that caused a stir.
“I had a tracksuit top on and when we were being introduced to the dignitaries, I kept my hands in the pockets of the tracksuit,” Brett told Jake Duke in a Kayo Sports interview.
“Some people said I was being rude or ignorant or that I wasn’t all that interested but it wasn’t that at all.
“I just didn’t know what to do with my hands. I felt awkward with them by my side or behind my back so I put them in my pockets. It was as simple as that.”
As a youngster, Brett was probably more interested in baseball than rugby league, partly because his father and uncle had represented Australia in that sport.
“Then I started playing in a few trials at Parramatta and before I knew it I was playing under 23s, then first grade and my old man said ‘forget baseball, you’ll make money playing rugby league,” he recalled.
“In the early days at Parra, we were coached by Jack Gibson and he made sure he didn’t over-coach us. He just let us play to our abilities.
“Of course there were gameplans and when it came down to it, Jack just let us be ourselves.”
Brett still loves watching the game but doesn’t feel any jealousy about the modern players’ pay packets.
“In my time, we had to have a job outside football and we didn’t have managers or all the medical staff they have now, but that’s progress,” he said.
“We also had lives away from football. I look at it this way, these guys are getting a lot more money but they’re training a lot more, too.
“People who might be working 40 hours a week for $50K a year might look at them and say they hate them and the money they’re making.
“But these players are only in the game for a short time. They might be earning a million a year but that’s for six or seven years … or longer if they are really lucky … and if they do the right thing they can set themselves up pretty well for life.
“But it can all fall apart so quickly with injuries and things, there are no guarantees”
Brett says today’s game is fast and exciting but perhaps a little too fast.
“Players are struggling with the speed of the game and that’s what is causing the number of dropped balls,” he says.
“And there are too many rules in the game and too many rule changes. I often wonder if the people changing the rules ever actually ask the players what they think. After all, they’re the ones who have to play under the rules.”
Brett hasn’t had too many health issues in his 60s but in July 2017 was diagnosed with Non-Hodgkin lymphoma cancer in the stomach.
“The tumour is still there,” he says” but they seem to have it under control” he says.
Brett has three adult children, Joshua, Nikkolah and Mitchell, a grandson and two granddaughters.
“My daughter lives in South Australia and has two girls and we catch up whenever we can,” he says. “That mainly means Face-time video calls but I look forward to them.”
Barry Dick was a journalist at The Courier-Mail and Sunday Mail for 43 years, before retiring in 2015. Most of that time was spent on the sports desk in a variety of roles including sports editor, digital sports editor, rugby league editor and chief rugby league writer. Barry was the first full-time Australian football writer for The Courier-Mail in 1973. Barry was inducted into the Media Hall of Fame on March 27 2017.
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