NRL great Cameron Smith may have won all that rugby league has to offer, but that doesn’t mean everything went to plan during his decorated 19-year career.
Smith, who holds the NRL record for most career games with 430, won three premierships during a career doused by some controversy and heartache.
The Melbourne Storm won another two premierships during the former Maroons captains celebrated tenure at the club, but were stripped of the 2007 and 2009 titles after breaching the salary cap.
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But Smith helped the Storm rewrite their history two years later as a team deserving of true premiership glory, leading them to a 10-point win against the Bulldogs.
Melbourne secured the other two premierships in 2017 and 2020, and they won both after losing a grand final the year or two before.
Ahead of the 2022 finals series, which kicks-off with a blockbuster between the Panthers and Eels on Friday night, Smith has opened up about how the “awful feeling” helped fuel his success.
“It’s always about looking to get better, not just year on year, well that’s the end goal is to try and be better than your previous year,” Smith told SEN’s The Captain’s Run on Thursday.
“Particularly when you’re talking about grand final losses, it is such an awful feeling. It is such an awful feeling.
“When you finish the match, the final siren goes, the other team has won, you stay out on the ground, you watch them lift the premiership trophy, and you see the feelings that they’re experiencing compared to your own.
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“I remember as soon as you see them lift that trophy, your mindset goes straight away to the following year, just thinking ‘there is no way I want to have this feeling that I’m feeling right now next year.’
“When players say ‘that loss didn’t spur me on’, I think they’re telling you a little fib. I really do, I really do.
“I don’t think there’s any player that played in a losing grand final that didn’t go on the following year without that small part of memory in the back of our minds, thinking there’s no way we’re going to experience that feeling again.
“It just drives you, it drives you through the difficult parts of the season, the grinding part of the year. You may have just played State of Origin, you come back to club land, it’s a bit of a grind… you use that just to get you going again.”
Athletes around the world respond to the agony of falling short differently.
Basketball star LeBron James was back in the gym just a matter of days after Cleveland’s loss to the State Warriors during the NBA Finals in 2017.
It’s not unheard of for superstar athletes to want to drive to take no days off as they look to go one better the following season, and make up for theirs shortcoming with their next opportunity.
But for Smith, he was never the type of player to be back in the gym just after a grand final loss.
Instead, the former Kangaroos captain made sure that he learnt from the defeat before getting away from the sport completely.
“Not so much physical, it was more just making sure that you one, review the season and look at areas where you weren’t quite happy with as an individual,” he added.
“That’s the most important thing is to sit down and review the season just gone and look for areas of your game, both on and off the field, where you can be a better player the following year.
“I always made sure I had sufficient away from time away from footy so I was mentally prepared for the next season, and ready to go.”
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Smith’s message is potentially a good omen for the South Sydney Rabbitohs, who are looking to mount what would be an historic run through the finals this month.
South Sydney fell just short of eternal glory last season, losing to the Panthers by just two-points at Suncorp Stadium, but certainly have the team on paper to win it all from seventh.
But for Smith’s old team the Storm, they have a historically tough challenge awaiting them back home in Melbourne.
The Canberra Raiders have won their last four matches at AAMI Park, and will be looking to make sure the good times keeping rolling through to at least the second week of the postseason.
“Going off their last couple of performances… (Melbourne) they had way too many unforced errors. What they’re doing is they’re applying pressure on themselves rather than the opposition.
“When you look at the key position players for Melbourne, what they’re then having to do is they’re having to make more tackles, they’re having to come up with more efforts defensively, which then when they get the ball they’re lacking energy to try and attack.
“In the last couple of games when they’re making these unforced errors… you’re inviting the opposition back into your end, you’re inviting the opposition to apply pressure onto yourself, and really you’re minimising the opportunity for your key players to do their thing.
“It’s a cycle, the game’s a cycle. You need to be able to hold the ball, apply pressure to the opposition, and then defend well. You just need to keep going around in that cycle until the opposition breaks.
“(Canberra) they’ve got no fear going down to AAMI Park this weekend and going down and playing well, because they know they can. They beat the Storm what was it seven weeks ago?”
