It’s a Cinderella story for Crowe
AAP
Russell Crowe remembers South Sydney’s last premiership in 1971, as one of the highlights of his childhood.
“It was like a birthday, we even had a cake,” he has reminisced several times.
The Hollywood star and Rabbitohs co-owner was seven at the time, he is now 50.
For everything that has happened in his life since then, through the thick and the thin, he has remained a diehard Rabbitohs fan.
Love him or loathe him, and Crowe can polarise opinion within and without the rugby league world like few others, he is a great supporter of the code and of the club.
“Let’s vote yes, let’s get into bed together, I hope you respect me in the morning,” Crowe, decked out in a simple Rabbitohs polo shirt, implored Souths members as the final speaker before the successful vote on his and Peter Holmes a Court’s takeover of the club in 2006.
Ironically the vote took place at the same venue, ANZ Stadium, where the Rabbitohs will meet Canterbury in Sunday’s NRL grand final.
It is highly doubtful whether any of the 3942 members who voted yes on that warm March day eight years ago, to just achieve the required 75 per cent majority vote, regret instigating relations with Crowe.
Even long-time agitator George Piggins has softened his stance against ‘The Cinderella Man’ and will be at the game on Sunday after vowing to never attend a match, while Crowe held control of the club.
The vast majority of media coverage in the lead-up to his year’s decider has focused on Souths and that is because it is a Cinderella story.
The most successful club in Australian rugby league history that has claimed 20 titles, but none in over four decades.
Kicked out of the NRL by media giant News Ltd in 2000, but reinstated two years later only to become competition easy beats for season after season.
For a man as powerful and influential as Crowe, who is an automatic invitee to the biggest social occasions on the planet, he appears more at home at the club’s Redfern base, with a stubby in his hand chatting with some of the clubs’ greats and present day heroes in the dying twilight at regular summer barbeques designed to keep the Rabbitohs spirit alive.
For a man who deals with the richest of moguls imaginable, Crowe is just as affable amongst his own, addressing every Rabbitohs staffer by name.
But for all his millions and all his movies, Crowe, who grew up wanting to play in the cardinal and myrtle rather than star on the silver screen, he can’t take that second tackle hit up into the teeth of the defence, he can’t make that try saving play.
That will be left to the likes of Sam Burgess, Greg Inglis et al if rugby league’s longest running drought between premierships is to be finally broken, and Crowe is to have his cake again, and eat it too.