By Wayne Heming
By his own admission, Gary Belcher never wanted to be a rugby league fullback.
As a teenager, he had a crack at five-eighth, centre, and even lock,
The one position he never wanted to play was fullback — a position he didn’t rate as too exciting or that important.
As it turned out, not only did the man nicknamed “Badge” play in the No.1 jumper throughout his entire senior career, but he retired prematurely through injury as one of the finest attacking fullbacks of the last 50 years.
Belcher was playing centre at South Magpies when he started out under former South Sydney legend Bob McCarthy who was the club’s coach.
“(The late) Peter Jackson came to the club in 1983, Macca’s last season as coach, and he switched me to fullback to accommodate him and cover injury to our regular fullback Allan Power,” explained Belcher of his position switch.
“We’d played the trials and Macca, who was an amazing coach, called me over and told me I’d be playing fullback,” added Belcher of his unwanted positional switch which ultimately defined his career.
“To be honest, I was insulted. I was shattered. At the time I honestly thought it was the beginning of the end for me.
“I always thought fullbacks and wingers just stood around and watched guys play football.”
It didn’t take Belcher long to backflip on that opinion.
“I just loved it (fullback), from the very first game,” he said.
“The freedom, the ability to rove around the field, even though a lot of fullbacks didn’t do much of it that back then, was exciting.
“Until then, I just thought fullbacks waited out the back and chimed into the backline.
“I loved being able to pop up anywhere any time on the field. That’s how I had played lock back then.”
Looking back on his career, Belcher has every reason to feel good about what he achieved in a position he never really wanted to play.
“I absolutely exceeded all my expectations,” he says, reflecting on his many accomplishments across the game of rugby league.
“I started as a kid with Souths in Brisbane just wanting to play first grade.
“So yes when you look at what I achieved, I reached heights way above what I ever thought I would.
“I am extremely proud of what I was part of.”
Belcher only made a couple of rep teams as a teenager but never really had a goal to be a professional footballer because, in those days, you had to have a job.
“I was a five-eighth in those early days and there was this gun five-eighth running around for Wests at the time named Tonie Kennedy who made all the rep sides.
“He was an absolute gun.
“One day I came up against this kid I’d never heard of named Tony Currie.
“I remember thinking to myself: ‘I wonder what he is like’ because I’d never heard of him previously.
“It turned out, the new kid was Tonie Kennedy, who had changed his name to the Currie family name,” laughed Belcher.
Belcher retired in 1993 at the age of 31.
“I wanted to keep playing but sometimes injuries take that decision away and that’s why I decided to pull the plug on my career., Belcher told FOGS.com.au in a recent chat
FOG #47 played almost 100 games for Souths Magpies in Brisbane, winning a BRL premiership in 1985 with Mal Meninga under Wayne Bennett at Souths Magpies, and almost 150 games for Canberra, alongside some of the true greats of the game.
He claimed back-to-back premierships, again with Meninga, with the Raiders in 1989-90.
All-up, Belcher played in four of Canberra’s five grand finals between 1987 and 1991 as the Green Machine dominated the game in the late 80s before the Brisbane Broncos emerged as a super power winning six grand finals between 1992 and 2006.
Those two clubs owned rugby league for a large slice of the 80s and 90s producing some of the best players of all time.
Unfortunately never met in what would have been a grand final for ages.
“It was a grand final I imagine every fan wanted to see at the time,” said Belcher.
“It looked like it was going to happen in 1993 before Ricky Stuart broke his leg.
‘We were headed for the grand final, we were leading the comp but after Ricky’s injury, we went straight out the back door.
“It would have been a very interesting and highly entertaining grand final for sure.”
Belcher represented Queensland in 16 Origin battles between 1986-93 and earned selection in two Kangaroo Tours in 1986-1990, playing all three Tests at fullback in the epic 2-1 Ashes series win against Great Britain.
He also had a stint with Castleford in the English League in the late 1980s.
An evasive running fullback, with an electric turn of foot early in his career, Blecher took out the Raider’s player-of-the-year in 1987-88 and collected the game’s highest individual accolades, the Dally M representative player of the year and Dally M Fullback of the year gongs.
“We had a pretty special Queensland team in the late 80s. It’s not mentioned all the much, but we won eight Origin games in a row which will always be pretty special.
“I know winning eight series’ straight (Queensland won Origin series 2006-2013) is above everyone else, but to win eight games in a row at that level deserves recognition.
“We lost the opening game in 1987 and won the next two and won 3-0 in 1988-89.”
Belcher said it took a long time before NSW woke up to how special some of the Queensland teams were.
“They always thought they were superstars,” Belcher said.
“With the emergence of players like Darren Lockyer, JT (Johnathan Thurston), Cameron Smith, Gilly (Trevor Gillmesiter) and Greg Inglis, the Maroons dominated the Blues.”
Belcher recalled a time when the great Arthur Beetson once quipped: “This team is good enough to win eight in a row” after Queensland had won back-to-back series in 2006-2007.
When he first came into Queensland Origin camp in 1986 Belcher only knew a few players, Mal Meninga, who’d been a teammate in Brisbane and Canberra, Bobby Lindner, and the late, great Peter Jackson who all made him feel part of the maroon family.
He said guys like Bryan Niebling, Turtle (Greg Conescu), and GD (Greg Dowling) were a good bunch of guys who also made him feel at ease quickly.
“They were bloody good times and as Jacko was once famously quoted: ‘We partied pretty hard’.”
“I wasn’t the biggest drinker and I’d usually look for a back door out of the place.
“Bobby would already be gone or sometimes he’ didn’t bother to show up half the time.”
Belcher recalled a funny story about a XXXX beer promotion night during an Origin camp in Brisbane in the last 1980s in which a number of the Maroon players were involved.
“There were a few of us there, Mickey Hancock, Alfie, and Peter Jackson and we ended up at a few pubs partying hard before they closed the doors at about 3 am.
“I said to Jacko; ’mate, I’ve had enough, but he said: ‘no, no no, come and have a few more, I’ve got the keys to the Triple M radio office, we’ll get into the bosses’ bar stock’.
“We had training at 8 am and we were still drinking at 4 am.
“I took off down the back stairs with Mickey Hancock in hot pursuit and we jumped into a cab back to the Travelodge Hotel
“The next minute Jacko reached into the cab door, grabs my shirt, and rips it off my back.
“The cab took us back to the Travelodge and of course, my roomie Bob Lindner woke up with all the noise from Jacko banging on our room door.
“I told Bobby just to pretend to be asleep because Jacko wanted to keep drinking.
“Jacko shouted: “Let me in or I’ll bash the door down”.
“It went quiet for a minute or two and we thought he’d gone away. The next thing we heard Jacko charging up the hall and smashing the door down.”
As it turned out legendry team manager Dick “Tosser” Turner” was in the room next door and came storming out demanding to know what was going on and why the room door was off its hinges.
“Who did that?” he fumed.
“We both looked at Jacko.
“Tosser then looked at Jacko and said: ‘You’re going to be the first player ever kicked out of an Origin camp’.”
Jacko just stood there laughing and eventually said to Turner: I’m not even the team Tosser.”
Belcher has a book full of stories from his two Kangaroo Tours in 1986 and 1990 and his Origin career, but like most players, the best ones stay “in-house”.
Asked about a rumour (started by this author who spotted Dale Shearer in a betting shop in Manchester before the second Test) if “Rowdy” backed himself to score the first try at Old Trafford with Australia 1-0 down after being ambushed at Wembley in the opening Test.
“I can’t say for sure but if you look at his involvement in the opening 20 minutes of that Test, he was involved in everything,” laughed Belcher.
“Players betting on games was legal back then so I reckon it may just be true.”
As I turned out, Shearer scored the first try of that Test, which included two very special tries.
The first belonged to Manly’s Test debutante Cliff Lyons in a try in which he handled three times as the ball swept through 12 sets of hands.
The other was Meninga’s magnificent effort to chase after runaway halfback Ricky Stuart, bumping away his own Australian teammate and a few Lions defenders to make sure Australia leveled the series.
Belcher played with Allan Langer and some of the best players to ever lace on a boot for Queensland, including Wally Lewis and Mal Meninga.
Alfie was a real Larrikin and according to Belcher great company to be around.
“He still is,” says Belcher.
“He’s such a funny little bloke. He is great to be around and his was great for the team.
“If I was on the Immortals panel today I’d be voting for him, I can’t come to terms with how they don’t rate him up there with Joey (Andrew Johns).”
When Langer first came into Origin camp, as a skinny, blonde-haired kid from Ipswich who needed a booster chair in the team bus, he was quickly nicknamed Alf, after that Alien creature in the TV series of the same name.
“There were blokes who didn’t think he belonged (in the team because he was too small) there and that included a few heavy-hitters in the team who doubted he was up to it.”
But the Queensland selectors got it right again, as they often did when picking Origin sides.
“To be honest I don’t think any of them (selectors) could have known how good Alf was or was going to be,” said Belcher.
Before Langer’s Origin debut, there was talk in the Queensland sheds about how the players were going to hide him from the big NSW forwards.
“Fatty (Paul Vautin) jumped up and declared: when he puts on that maroon jumper he’ll be a Queenslander, he’ll be right.
“Alfie went out and brained them.”
Belcher also set the record straight on who came up with the “Queenslander” call to arms.
“That was Fatty,” said Belcher.
“We were in a team meeting and I think it was Wayne (Bennett) who said to us: “We need a call to arms when things are tough, we need to be better on our try line.”
“A few ideas were tossed around and Fatty stood up and said: ‘What’s wrong with Queenslander, it says it all’, and we all jumped on board.”
Unlike his football career when retirement was forced on him, Belcher was content to retire from his work on radio after a tough few years personally.
“I’d been to that many funerals in the last five years, including our bloke (referring to his son who passed away five years ago) that I didn’t want to be one of those guys who works and then suddenly drops dead.’
Nothing can prepare you for the loss of a son or any family member for that matter, and an emotional Belcher said there was never a day when his son wasn’t in his thoughts.
“It was very difficult He was 31, and every day it still hurts.
Belcher admits he was not completely happy with his job towards the end.
“It was a great job working with SEN Sports and with Scotty Sattler but to be honest near the end I wasn’t enjoying it so, I thought now is the time to move on.
“I’m enjoying life now but that’s not to say I may not make a comeback if something exciting comes along.”
At 61, Belcher still loves waxing up his surfboard and hitting the waves.
He’s surfed in Sumatra in Indonesia plenty of times and another place in Timor called Rote and places like Samoa.
Rote is my favourite destination, it’s like a seniors tour for old men.
Surf’s Up Badge!
