His father was a famous player and coach, but the Sharks mentor has run his own race in the game.
In the game of the father … Cronulla coach Craig FitzgibbonCredit: Fairfax Media
Unlike Pinocchio, the real-life Tiger Woods and tennis’s Williams sisters, Craig Fitzgibbon was not turned on the lathe of his father’s ambition.
Fitzgibbon, the 47-year-old coach of the Sharks since 2022, is a premiership player, as is his father Allan, who also coached Cronulla between 1988-91. Despite their football club backgrounds being almost as parallel as the uprights through which Craig kicked goals to become the highest points-scoring forward in premiership history, Allan never sought to shape his son’s career or reap its rewards. (After all, any generational family coaching Sydney’s poorest club, such as the earlier example of John and Aaron Raper, knows you don’t coach the Sharks for money).
Craig Fitzgibbon with his father Allan and mother Michelle in 2003. Credit: Greg Totman
Allan says, “Craig was a ballboy with me at Cronulla, but once he started getting into junior rep teams, I stepped aside.” Craig agrees, saying, “My father let me make my own decisions. He gave advice, but he always left it to me to make the end call.
“Mum and dad still live in Dapto,” he adds with the unassuming normalcy both families live their lives.
“He goes to the odd game, but doesn’t come to Shark Park home games,” before adding in joking reference to Allan’s role, as a centre, in one of rugby league’s greatest upsets – Balmain beating Souths in the 1969 grand final – “He goes to about 15 Balmain 1969 reunions a year.”
Allan Fitzgibbon playing for Balmain.Credit: Fairfax Media
Craig is as closed as an oyster about his own life and is resistant to publicity. He opens up only about his childhood years, saying, “I do remember the joy of coming to the game. I’ve been in and around first-grade dressing sheds since the age of 7. I didn’t realise how fortunate I’ve been until I started bringing my own kids to the football. They love it.”
He agrees the pull of the game is akin to a great ocean tide; it churns on relentlessly, with its hold over you greater beneath the surface than above. “We’ve been around the game most of our lives. I don’t know if we know anything different.”
Surely, it is to rugby league’s credit that so many play/coach their father’s game with their father’s name. Craig Fitzgibbon actually took the point-scoring record from Canberra’s David Furner who later coached the club, as did his father, Don.
‘He goes to about 15 Balmain 1969 reunions a year.’
Craig Fitzgibbon’s cheeky description of his famous father Allan
Other NRL combinations are the Clearys at Penrith; the Flanagans at the Dragons, the Fultons at Manly and the Arthurs at Parramatta. The NRLW has Steph Hancock, daughter of early Queensland Origin player, Rohan, as well as Millie Boyle (now Elliott), daughter of Raider, David. The Bulldogs Max King is a fourth-generation player, with father David (Titans), grandfather John (St George) and great-grandfather Cec (South Sydney).
The Fitzgibbons are about to become a three-generational rugby league family with Craig’s son Aaymon – a promising five-eighth with the Illawarra Steelers SG Ball team – in demand from a number of NRL clubs. Consistent with Allan’s “advice only” involvement in Craig’s career, Craig will ensure the Fitzgibbon name will neither be a burden nor a blessing.
“Aaymon has just starting to talk to a number of clubs,” he said, hinting his son will not be at Cronulla. “I’ll leave it to his manager, Dave Riolo. He did eight weeks pre-season training with St George Illawarra before going back to SG Ball. I’m not sure it’s best at his age to jump to another club.”
Craig Fitzgibbon playing for the Dragons in 1999.Credit: NRL Imagery
While the father of Wests Tigers Lachlan Galvin might take a different view on the future of his 19-year-old son, longstanding St George Illawarra supporters will be heartened by Craig’s preference that his son remains a Dragon.
After all, Craig left the club the year after starring in the losing 1999 grand final team. He won’t talk about it, but his ex-teammates still do, sad they lost a player who, had he started the game and St George Illawarra won, would probably have been awarded the Churchill Medal for best on ground. It is a tale of lost opportunity, fuelled by the administrative inertia of the early years of the joint venture.
Fitzgibbon waited for days for a contract before the Sydney Roosters made him feel wanted, saying: “Here’s a three-year deal; good money; we want you to play for us and be our goal kicker.” As it transpired, Fitzgibbon won his Churchill Medal in the Roosters’ 2002 premiership team.
Yet, it is the only grand final he won in five attempts, also losing in 2000, 2003 and 2004. His critics as a coach point to his results with the Sharks, finishing second in 2022 but losing successive finals; sixth in 2023 but fourth in 2024 before a loss to the Storm, a win over the Cowboys, followed by a 26-6 loss to the premiers.
Allan, similarly, won the Sharks’ inaugural minor premiership in 1988 followed by successive losses in the finals, while the 1989 and 1990 years were also disappointing. But to blame these results on Fitzgibbon genes is ludicrous.
An earlier Cronulla coach, Jack Gibson, was mystified by the Sharks’ finals paralysis. Apart from his quip about waiting for the Sharks to win a premiership being akin to leaving the porch light on for Harold Holt, the ARL Coach of the Century also lamented of Cronulla: “There is something in the woodwork of the joint.”
Craig Fitzgibbon hugs Sydney Roosters captain Brad Fittler after they won the 2002 titleCredit: REUTERS
But if rich clubs think the most important factor in winning is spirit, poor clubs know it is money. Another Cronulla coach, John Lang, highlighted this when he said, before Shane Flanagan’s 2016 breakthrough premiership: “People ridicule the Sharks for not winning a premiership. It’s a success for the club just to survive a season.”
The financial situation at Shark Park is better now, with the NRL funding the salary cap, as well as a $5m administrative grant. Allan Fitzgibbon agrees, saying, “They’ve had some dramas over the years, but from what I hear, things are pretty stable now.” However, clubs like the Broncos, Panthers and Bulldogs, have resources to provide benefits the Sharks can only envy.
Still, it’s a mental barrier, rather than a monetary one the Sharks must break through in 2025 if their end of season is not to resemble a vain man’s 39th birthday – an annual event.
Fitzgibbon’s No.7, Nicho Hynes, must learn to take control of games. Asked whether his own future is inextricably linked to the performance in big games of Hynes and to a lesser extent, No.6 Braydon Trindall, Fitzgibbon says, “yep”, before launching into a spirited, off-the-record, defence of them.
Nicho Hynes and Craig Fitzgibbon.Credit: NRL Photos
After winning the 2022 Dally M medal, Hynes faced helium-filled expectations, but then came two poor State of Origin matches. He’d developed a reputation for either magic or meltdown. At times on the field, Nicho looks like a bank robber surrounded by cops, but lately, with the Sharks 4-4, he usually resembles a traffic cop comfortably in control. Fitzgibbon refuses to elaborate, except to say all top halves have early “vulnerabilities” and it takes time to develop an all-around game.
The NRL’s best player, Penrith’s Nathan Cleary, is yet to dominate Origin. Melbourne’s Jahrome Hughes took six years to progress from a utility who did not play a game on New Zealand’s tour of England to winning the 2024 Dally M Medal for being the game’s best player.
‘When you tell a player a lie, you shoot yourself in the foot. They will come in droves for you after that.’
Allan Fitzgibbon
Cronulla is white-bread territory, suggesting it would embrace the tribal nature of Anglo-Saxon families, despite its insularity. However, the Sharks season launch featured on stage Indigenous Australian, Maori, Samoan and Tongan dance routines from players across the NRL and NRLW, including pathway teams. A cultural banner, incorporating 46 different heritages was unveiled. Fitzgibbon defers all credit to the club’s welfare department for celebrating the increasing diversity in the game.
Fitzgibbon is a fundamentally decent man in a profession which breeds paranoia and surliness.
His friends say there are only a small number of better people in the world, such as a few mothers and the recently departed Pope. His critics wonder if he lacks the ruthlessness sometimes needed.
Yet, above all, players demand honesty, although increasingly, it would seem to be criticism followed by a cuddle.
Fitzgibbon is aware of the story of Pinocchio, mentioned at the beginning of this column and how he was shaped by his woodcutter father, Geppetto. And how Pinocchio’s nose grew every time he told a lie. He concedes it is not in the Fitzgibbon nature to torture the truth, or lie defensively, a phenomenon termed “the Pinocchio Syndrome” by psychologists.
Allan Fitzgibbon acknowledges this bedrock truth of his family and the game, saying with the wisdom of the father/coach: “When you tell a player a lie, you shoot yourself in the foot. They will come in droves for you after that.”
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