With a camera crew following his every move, Craig Bellamy last year revealed the game-day angst he has carried his whole career.
Despite having coached more than 500 NRL matches, Stan’s Revealed – Craig Bellamy: Inside the Storm documentary lifted the lid on how nerves frequently make the hours before a game almost unbearable for one of rugby league’s greatest ever mentors.
On Wednesday night, clutching a Jim Beam and cola (no Queensland sugarcane champagne, thank you) in the Suncorp sheds, Bellamy toasted the Blues’ grinding 18-6 Origin I victory, and Laurie Daley. And for once, a pleasurable game-day experience.
Bellamy, Daley’s sounding board in the coach’s box, made sure he sat largely out of sight of Channel 9’s cameras. And revelled in the fact it was someone else going through the emotional wringer only a head coach can truly understand.
A coach’s burden can be a cruel and unusual punishment. An incredible investment in the 17 players in the middle, so much work poured into them, their game plan and every possible scenario … and then you have to watch on, largely unable to influence proceedings any further beyond interchanges and relayed messages.
“So I was well-behaved,” Bellamy grinned. No blow-ups, he swears.
Laurie Daley and Craig Bellamy ahead of State of Origin I, 2025Credit: NRL Imagery/Grant Trouville
Daley confirms.
“Very well-behaved. Me, not so much.”
The Blues coach knows the intensity of Origin like few others as one of the state’s most decorated players and longest-serving coaches. Such was the toll of his first series as NSW coach, in 2013, he ended up with shingles.
Aside from a few annual Indigenous All Stars games, though, Daley hasn’t coached at any level since his sacking by the NSWRL in 2017. A tense, error-strewn contest where the Blues wore a Brian To’o sin-bin even Darren Lockyer couldn’t agree with was always going to get Daley’s pulse racing.
Bellamy rides the bus: The Blues en route to Origin I victory at Suncorp Stadium.Credit: NRL Imagery/Grant Trouville
“I rode the emotions pretty high,” Daley said after touching down in Sydney 1-0 up. “Usually I try to stay calm and I think I’m pretty relaxed and focused. But no, [Wednesday] night, I think I was just in the zone, feeling every bit of it.
“So I needed to be probably better than what I was. Having a good, strong coaching group around me with Matt King, Deano [Dean Young], Whitey [Brent White] helps. And Bellza [Bellamy], he was invaluable.”
How so?
“Well, when they’ve been there and done it like Craig has his whole career, a coach like that they just know every situation, every decision, every tactical option you have,” Daley said.
“What we needed to be looking out for and what we could respond with. In that period in the second half where we made things hard on ourselves, where we probably panicked a little bit and tried to force the ball and came up with a few errors, Craig was part of calming things down for us. The players needed to calm down and our decision makers needed to be calm as well.”
As noted by colleague Roy Masters, one hell of a fly on the wall inside the Blues camp, it was Zac Lomax who approached NSW staff at half-time suggesting he switch sides to cover the defensive void left by To’o’s benching.
Bellamy in turn, made mention of Daley’s own half-time address. Queensland’s sole try did come when NSW were down to 12. But the momentum all of Suncorp Stadium could feel, the traditional Maroons miracle comeback, it went no further.
“I thought Loz nailed half-time actually,” Bellamy said. “We mentioned it a couple of times during the week, and it’s no secret, things will go against you at some point in a game.
“You’ve got to go through those moments, grit your teeth and work your way out of it. That’s what we spoke to the group about. There’s going to be things you don’t want to happen. A sin bin is one of them. That’s in all games, and Laurie made that point really well, I thought.
And Bellamy, as you’d expect, played down his role in the Blues success.
“I wasn’t even there for half the week, all the credit has to go to the players and coaches,” he stresses.
But he was there at Suncorp, having joined NSW at the start of their camp before flying home to Melbourne and then to Brisbane on Tuesday.
And Bellamy sat at the back of the coach’s box for the first time in 20-odd years. Actually enjoying game-day.
“I didn’t know what to expect, but I was nowhere near as nervous as I usually was,” he said. “I don’t know what that actually means, because you’re certainly still invested and I think my head was a little bit clearer. I hope I was a help up there in the box because of that.”
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