Hindmarsh revives Blues and Roos aspirations
Greg Prichard | June 19, 2008
Inspired by Craig Fitzgibbon's return to the NSW team after an absence of three years, Nathan Hindmarsh has abandoned plans to quit representative football at the end of the season.
Hindmarsh, who has recently revived his damaging, wide-running style for Parramatta, revealed he was hurt by his omission from the Australian team for last month's Test against New Zealand.
The 28-year-old second-rower also said Parramatta's big wins over Canberra and Wests Tigers had begun to turn around their season after earlier inconsistency, however, they had to continue to prove they were back as a force.
"We need more evidence," Hindmarsh said. "I think this Sunday will be a big test for us, to try to get over the top of the Sharks at their home ground. We're capable of winning the comp, but we're still a fair way from finding the form we need."
Hindmarsh said he made a private decision to quit representative football after he was part of the Australian side that thrashed the Kiwis 58-0 in Wellington last October, but his subsequent omissions from the national and state sides hit him hard.
"It did hurt," he said. "I would have loved to have been there, in the game's Centenary year. Not playing in the Centenary Test was the biggest disappointment for me. It's a big year of celebrations for the game and I really wanted to be involved in it."
And when Hindmarsh watched Fitzgibbon, just a month short of his 31st birthday, more than hold his own in Origin, he changed his plans. "I was going to give the rep footy away, but not now," Hindmarsh said.
"Fitzy could have easily done the same thing and quit rep footy, but look at him now. He has become an inspiration to me. Everyone was writing him off years ago. They said he was too old and too slow. But he was in a side that wasn't functioning very well and he was shouldering a lot of the responsibility and stepping up to the front row to help. Now he's got his own game back.
"I'm only 28 and I've decided I'm going to keep making myself available. Even when it comes to retiring from the NRL, you might go and then wish you'd stayed a bit longer. My brother [Ian] retired at the end of last season and he's thinking now that he finished a year early."
Hindmarsh is contracted to the Eels until the end of 2010 and would like to continue playing beyond that. But, with a partner and two children to consider, he is thinking about life after his playing days are over.
"I think it would be awesome to be on the coaching staff at Parra or to do some sort of recruitment or development role," he said. "Coaching is a risky business, but the thrill and the challenge of being a coach makes it exciting to me. I'm interested in getting involved in coaching and possibly building up to a first-grade job."
While the demands of making 40-50 tackles per match had blunted Hindmarsh's attacking game, it seems he has regained that edge in the past couple of games. Has it been by design?
"It's just the way things are going for me at the moment," Hindmarsh said. "I always try to play like that, but I haven't had the energy to do it properly because I've been doing a lot of tackling. The last couple of weeks, I haven't had to defend much on the left edge, where I play, and that's left me feeling a lot fresher."
Hindmarsh is desperate to get another shot at a premiership after experiencing grand final defeat in 2001, against Newcastle.
"My career will be incomplete if I don't win one," he said. "When I was young and I saw grown men crying on TV because they'd just won a premiership, that really got me going. That's why I wanted to play in the NRL - to win a grand final."
