The cry comes up the Leichhardt Oval tunnel, past stretching teammates and idling officials, to 158 centimetres of ink and exuberance.
“Get it, Mad Dog”.
Mad Dog – Roosters winger Jayme Fressard – deserves everything she gets in this game. Especially the nickname.
Around her 18th birthday she popped her quadriceps muscle off the bone doing a series of squats in the gym. She completed the squats. And the leg session. And two or three more days of her usual day-to-day activities before seeking a physiotherapist’s opinion. A six-month recovery followed.
In 2018, the week before moving to Brisbane for her first NRLW contract, “Mad Dog” tore her MCL and her ACL. Then midway through her recovery, lateral and medial ligaments in her ankle.
“Oh yeah, there was the ankle too. That was another six months out after six months already rehabbing my left knee,” Fressard said.
Rising Rooster … Jayme FressardCredit:Steven Siewert
“It wasn’t footy either. My dog [Havoc], and Mum’s cat [Leo] were about to go at each other. I’ve run and jumped down my stairs to break them up and tore my lateral and medial ligaments in my ankle. Somehow I didn’t break the bone, but all that swelling, I might as well have.”
Anything else?
“Well I did dislocate my finger in my first Roosters training session here, but that’s nothing is it?”
Tattoos everywhere on the 25-year-old prompted teammates to dub her “the female Josh Dugan” the moment she walked into the NRLW.
Roosters coach John Strange coined the somewhat more endearing “Mad Dog” the moment he saw her run.
“She’s got natural attributes – she’s fast, she’s got great feet and she’s very strong,” he says.
“But it’s her attitude that sets her apart … she wants to bust the line and fight like her life depends on it.
“There’s no carries just to do a job. It’s her personality that makes her as a player. She’ll fight for absolutely everything.”
Fressard has known little else her whole life. Mum Michelle will be in the stands when her daughter and the Roosters open the new Allianz Stadium in Friday’s grand final rematch against the Dragons.
Roosters flyer Jayme Fressard celebrates a try against her former club Brisbane last week.Credit:Getty
Michelle too has “just set up her new side hustle – a coffee van with her cupcakes and cookies”.
“But growing up, we never really had money or anything, I think that’s where I get my grind it out attitude from,” Fressard says.
“Mum raised four kids on her own and we lived pay cheque-to-pay-cheque each week.
“I wouldn’t be here without her. And I always say ‘one day I’m going to make enough money to buy a house for her’. If I can do that, that’s one big goal achieved.
“I watched Mum go through quite a bit, it wasn’t easy for us. But no matter what, no matter the money or whatever, she always made sure I could pursue my sport.
“I look back on my teenage years and I was a bit rude with Mum, we had a bit going on but we’ve got a very strong relationship because of all that too. I’m so grateful for what she did and overcame for us.”
A childhood spent on sporting paddocks was Fressard’s escape. It took her to representative honours with Central Coast Mariners and into Australia’s Rugby Sevens program, until now-Roosters captain Isabelle Kelly called, telling her Berkeley Vale had a women’s rugby league side.
Her spate of injuries, cruelly timed and inflicted, never fostered thoughts of giving it all up. Not when sport has always been one of Fressard’s few constants.
She grins now at the other fixture in a slightly mad-cap life. Fressard works with youth development program Creating Chances, and leads up the well-being program at her old Gorokan High School digs north of Wyong – an institution she hardly relished as a teenager.
Through it all together: Jayme and Michelle Fressard.Credit:Family collection
“I think of my work as just trying to be that person that I needed when I was at school,” Fressard says.
“Sometimes you don’t realise what’s going on with kids outside of what you can see. Getting to know kids and offering that support network is the key. I had a few teachers who changed my life.
“It’s a low-socio economic area and you do hear it from kids, ‘We come from Gorokan, we can’t make it’. But when you can answer it and point out what you’ve done and how, it can give that little bit of hope. It’s not where you’re from, it’s what you put in.”
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