It's crunch time for Michael Ennis, Robbie Farah
A MAN with no goals is like a road with no destination.
Robbie Farah is a man with goals. They are written on a piece of tape around his wrist. They remind him where he wants to go and to never stops until he gets there. That's why he spurned a rich offer to join the Titans in January. One of Farah's goals was to captain Wests Tigers. He couldn't do that on the Gold Coast, so he stayed loyal and now leads the team into battle each weekend. Farah's goal has been achieved and now the next one awaits.
Michael Ennis is a man with goals. They don't appear on his wrist because they dictate his life. It's been that way ever since he picked up a football and more so since his father died. On that tragic day, Ennis vowed to live without regrets no matter what the price.
Even as a teenager he turned his back on alcohol and nightclubs to pursue his first obsession - rugby league. Ennis's goal has been achieved and now the next one awaits.
Born just 52 days apart in 1984, Farah and Ennis have been travelling the same road towards a common destination their entire lives. But when they cross paths at ANZ Stadium tomorrow that road will narrow, allowing only one to continue and claim his unfulfilled goal.
A NSW State of Origin jersey with their name written above the No. 9.
Will it say Farah? Will it say Ennis?
For once in modern-day rugby league, there's no splinters up the backside in this debate. No grey areas. Enthralled by the game's first personal rivalry since Benny Elias tangled with Steve Walters or Paul Harragon ran headlong into Mark Carroll, legends and fans alike cannot help but have an opinion.
Farah's camp feel their man is the hunted. They believe he has earned the right to succeed Danny Buderus through four seasons of splendid club form. They feel aggrieved at suggestions Farah is simply an attacking weapon who lacks the defensive grit to compete in Origin. They can't understand why Ennis is portrayed as intense and competitive, when Farah grew up proving himself against older brothers and cousins. If he lost a game of backyard footy, they'd be locked in the house. If he was dismissed in cricket, he'd break the bat.
John Elias, coach of Lebanon when Farah represented the Cedars as an 18-year-old in 2003, rates the hooker as one of the most driven footballers he's encountered. Considering Elias played for 12 clubs across three countries, that's saying something.
"I'll never forget after we beat the French in Tripoli," Elias recalled. "The boys were pretty excited and ready for a big night out. They were running around the hotel playing pranks and then Robbie burst out of his room.
"He was furious because they were disrupting his studies for the HSC. I wouldn't have believed it if I didn't see it - an 18-year-old willing to sacrifice a post-match party to bury his head in a text book.
"There was something special about him. He always knew what he wanted and wouldn't let anything get in his way."
And that's precisely what makes this contest so compelling, because Ennis refuses to give an inch either. Older brother Todd recalls Ennis as a teenager returning from a knee reconstruction months ahead of schedule because he was loath to let someone else claim his jersey.
"Mick used to even strap the wrong knee to put the opposition off - he had everything figured out," Todd said.
"If he injured the knee again it could have been career-threatening but Mick didn't care. He just couldn't stand the thought of someone else wearing his jersey."
Like Farah, Ennis was ultra-competitive as a child. But he was also single-minded - a quality that has seen the Newcastle junior misunderstood by former teammates as abrasive and cocky.
"Both our lives have always been footy," Todd continued. "He had all the books and autobiographies. He had posters and footy cards. All the PlayStation games we had were NRL. If I won, Mick would make us keep playing until he beat me.
"Although we were Manly fans, we'd go to EnergyAustralia Stadium and watch all three grades. We'd then get home and play one-on-one in the front yard until mum made us go to bed.
"On Saturday mornings we'd go to the local park and flick on the bore water valve to make the field muddy. Then we'd slide around for hours and put our dirty clothes in the bin afterwards because mum hated to wash them."
But Ennis's resolve was steeled as a teenager, when his father Brian began drinking heavily and losing touch with the boys. He eventually died in 2004.
"Towards the end dad drank a fair bit and Mick saw the consequences," Todd revealed.
"It sent him the other way. Even as a teenager, Mick rarely drank or went out because it compromised his footy."
After making his junior representative debut for Newcastle's Harold Matthews team the same year Brian began to slip away, Ennis was solely focused on getting as far as possible as soon as possible.
During the 2003 pre-season he challenged then-Knights coach Michael Hagan to train with the NRL squad. He not only beat them all in an ironman race at Nobbys Beach, but also targeted the toughest Knight of all - Ben Kennedy - during opposed sessions.
The upstart's rattling hits also rattled the natural hierarchy to such an extent that Kennedy and other senior players took personal exception to Ennis.
"I can see why he upset them, but that's Mick," Todd said.
"Unless you know him as a person, he's misunderstood. He wants everything yesterday and sets himself goals he wants to achieve. He felt that to make the NRL side he had to stand up to the best.
"So that's what he did."
Just as Ennis is misunderstood, so is the length of his rivalry with Farah. The truth is the pair weren't aware of each other until their 18th birthdays, when they both strived for the NSW under-19s hooking spot. Ennis got the prize, but Farah scored a fair consolation just days later when he debuted in first grade against Manly at Leichhardt.
Neither player can recall locking horns until Ennis moved to St George Illawarra in 2005. They would have to wait three more seasons before the rivalry truly blossomed.
Playing for his third club, Brisbane, Ennis upset the Tigers rake when he publicly bemoaned Farah's apparent mortgage on Buderus's jersey. When the two teams met in round 15 last year, Farah sledged the Bronco mercilessly and allegedly head-butted him in a scrum.
Fans loved every minute. A new rivalry was born. It will go to another level tomorrow with the highest prize on offer - the fulfilment of one man's goal.
