They were born within 90 minutes of each other on the M62 and grew up playing “rugby” on sloshy black mud in the north of England. Both are oversized human beings – indeed were you picking front-rowers from a random mass of humans, you’d look no further, accept no substitute – yet both have skills belying their heft, soft hands, light feet. And both are key men in this Sunday’s NRL grand final between South Sydney Rabbitohs and Canterbury-Bankstown Bulldogs.
And like the gay rugby world cup, a comparison of melons and rockmelons, and the 2009 German film directed by Detlev Buck and starring David Kross and Apinya Sakuljaroensuk, Same Same But Different, they are same-same but different.
In 2009 Sam Burgess was courted by Hollywood royalty, Russell Crowe, who three years previously had become majority owner of South Sydney. When Crowe rang Burgess the then 19-year-old thought it was mates having a lend. The pair have become firm friends, live a bike ride from one another.
Graham was a 26-year-old, 10-season St Helen’s man when he put it about that he wanted to have a crack in Sydney. Several clubs were interested in the England prop. But the Dogs made the biggest play. And they made it to Graham the footballer. A tradesman more than a flashy pizzaz man – he is one of the few players to wear black boots – Graham came to Sydney because of rugby league. Well, duh? Well, gleaming Sin City of Sydney, it’s got its temptations, and the nightlife, beaches, all that … these are 20-something men. Sydney is an attractive city. Graham, though, prefers coffee shops and corner pubs. I saw him at the darts. I asked him once what he does outside football and he laughed and said “Nothin’”.
Burgess is currently off the drink and party scene before he takes off to Bath and rugby. But before that he sucked on the juicy melon of Sydney many a night. In the daytime he loves the beach. He’s often photographed emerging from the water, dripping, glistening, wet muscles. Makers of swimwear would give him their products for free. Graham, meanwhile, with the skin tone and blonde-orange hair of an Irish Viking, doesn’t suit the sun and the sand. His attitude to the surf is that man evolved from water and he doesn’t see any reason to go back.
Their home grounds are both very Sydney, very rugby league.
Belmore Oval is nobody’s idea of Hollywood. It’s 15km to the CBD (and Redfern) but “The West” by any stretch. It’s red brick ‘burbs, Terry Lamb Reserve and faded signs on old butchers’ shops. But the joint is made for rugby league. Beneath the maggoty old grandstand there lies all the support a pro player needs. And Graham has thrived. Loves it.
Redfern Oval’s had a touch-up but still isn’t what you’d call Wembley. The suburb has its crap bits. Local white folks used to call it “Redferno” because if they said they lived there people would say “Oh”. Had its battles, Redfern, and The Block remains Indigenous Australia’s metropolitan heartland. But it’s also a walk from the CBD and hence largely gentrified with professional types doing up Victorian terraces and converting warehouses. It’s more like Surry Hills next door where hipsters live, whatever they are, people with Ned Kelly beards and paisley shirts. As far as I can tell anyone be a hipster, and good luck to them.
And so! Sunday, and grand final day, and the Battle of the Big Poms. Barring calamity, both men will play well, as they have all season, for these are seasoned, professional men. They finished high up in the Dally M Medal count, unprecedented for a pair of giant boppers in an award that almost always go to many-touch men of the “spine”: halves; hookers; fullbacks. Graham was front-rower of the year. Burgess, who plays like one, was lock of the year. Both men have been impossible to ignore.
Burgess is the rock-and-roll man, the big whacker, storming runs of blood and bone, and jolting sweat. Hoo-ha, it’s great to watch Big Sammy thunder. He fairly tears into the defensive line – athletic, muscular, coordinated and bloody rapid for a big rumbler. He’s hard and painful to stop, and capable of freeing an arm to offload for … well, not Issac Luke, unfortunately for Issac Luke. But in Luke Keary, Adam Reynolds, Dylan Walker and the great Greg “GI” Inglis at fullback, the Bunnies have men more than capable of capitalising on Burgess’s aggressive, line-busting brutality.
Graham’s work is more subtle. Not as quick, nor athletic, he’s more a rolling boulder, his hit-ups have a … well, “soft” is a long way from the right word. But he just sort of … glides into the defensive line. Yet he’s rarely driven back and almost always takes the right option at the right time. And because he offers so much with his hands, defenders hang off him. He’s almost a five-eighth. Indeed when the Dogs went through a late-season blip and Josh Reynolds was out often as not through injury, Origin or contravening rugby league’s laws, Des Hasler gave his prop forward long minutes, used him one off the ruck to set the speed men free. Graham’s sterling work servicing runners is a key to the Bulldogs’ go-forward.
In defence Graham’s work in the front-line is, again, more understated. He just gets in the way, uses bulk as ballast. None shall pass. And none do. And then he’s on the man, “wrestling” and turning him on his back. Burgess meanwhile, again, is more your feared thunder-pumper, the one for the dominant big whack who will scream out of the line looking to lay waste to the other mob’s big rumblers.
Where Graham perhaps has the edge in defence, perhaps everywhere, is his fitness. His engine. Graham can make 40 tackles, the last of which he’s chasing a winger, going him around the ankles. The man is a total footballer: skilled, aggressive, competitive, smart.
Aggressive? Burgess is all rip-and-tear, frothy aggro, and not above gripping a man’s testicles like a squirrel on a pair of acorns. And while Graham’s largely shaken off the “biter” tag from a couple of grand finals ago because he’s proven to be a super player and a good bloke, part of his story will always involve that wild melee in 2012, in which he appeared to chow down upon Billy Slater’s ear. As they say, just one goat.
Did he bite him? Graham said no. Went to the judiciary, pleaded not guilty. Still does, they say. I asked him this year did he bite Slater and he said he’d “totally moved on”. He understood people wanted to talk about it but he didn’t want to relive nor revive that particular chapter. So I asked an old Kangaroos prop forward who said Graham’s defence could’ve been that he was grinding his clenched teeth against Slater’s ear rather than biting it as a kelpie would a chunk of osso bucco. Such an action would still result in Slater’s ear turning into something of a bloody mess, as it did, and Graham could certainly be approbated over it. But a bite? Perhaps not. It was just a man in the red mist of the melee getting the better of an opponent, Slater, who for all his cuteness isn’t what you’d call not aggressive. Slater is a hard-boned and jolting footballer, super competitive, and not above inflicting pain in the way of rugby league. So our Jammer got hold of him and rubbed his teeth against his ear in a tight and aggressive fashion.
Anyway.
At more than one stage in Sunday’s decider, Burgess and Graham will come together. The South Sydney man will tear out of the line, the Bulldogs man will get in his way. And there will come a reckoning. And the alpha males, big bucks, will butt heads. And we’ll all revel in it. Bring it, Big Poms.
