Farewell to James Graham - the radical who was all fire and fury and couldn’t bear losing
League
- June 24, 2020 1:13pm
- by George Clarke
- Source: FOX SPORTS
James Graham has been known to let his passions come to the boilSource: Getty Images
It’s fitting for a man who has always danced to the beat of his own drum, that James Graham gets to go out on his own terms.
So many of his adversaries – Sam Burgess, Matt Gillett, Matt Scott to name a few in recent months – have been denied that privilege.
The chance to return home for one last hurrah with his boyhood club St Helens after 400 games at the top level, is richly deserved. He could have bumbled along until the end of the year with St George Illawarra collecting his big pay cheque, but he chose, for one last time, to challenge himself and who knows – perhaps even win a premiership.
Graham has always done things his own way. He is a Scouser after all, and Scousers are people to themselves – radicals, outsiders. Liverpool is a city that goes against the grain, priding itself on what makes it different.
In the 1980’s, for example, while the rest of England was voting for Margaret Thatcher’s free-market economics, Liverpool was electing a Trotskyist city council under Derek Hatton’s Militant movement.
James Graham of St. Helens in his early days with St HelensSource: FOX SPORTS
They call it Scouse exceptionalism, and Graham, in his own way, has always been that.
By the age of 19, Graham was a Great Britain international, who had won a Challenge Cup, a Super League title and a World Club Challenge. He was Super League’s Man of Steel aged 22, and when he ventured to Australia nobody was quite sure how long he would last. He did it because he wanted to challenge himself. In the end, he changed the competition.
Props shouldn’t pass. It’s more or less an unspoken code that came to be.
They put their heads down and carted it forward like lambs to the slaughter. But then Graham arrived at Belmore and said no, it doesn’t have to be this way.
So he passed, turning to ballplay at the line like a halfback. It had a knock-on effect, first at Canterbury, then across the NRL. You could make a case that big men using soft hands has filtered through to rugby union.
He could do it tough, too, clattering into blokes with no regard for his own wellbeing because he dared to. He is paying the price for that now, his legs not what they once were, his battle with concussion well-publicised.
But ask Ryan Bailey, back in England, about James Graham. Bailey was a nasty b*****d, and like all good nasty bastards he has tattooed eyelids and an upside down crucifix inked on his face (he also has a dad who famously disarmed two gun-wielding robbers in a bookmakers with a plastic chair and sat on them until the police arrived -
see here).
Games between Bailey’s Leeds and Graham’s Saints were notoriously spiteful affairs. And after one cheap shot too many, Graham made it his own mission to go after Bailey. He hunted him down for the entirety of the second half. The Leeds prop was so rattled he ran sideways, arcing across field to escape the oncoming Graham before eventually being substituted.
It was that kind of thing – along with wiping vaseline on his legs, quoting David Brent from
The Office or valiantly attempting to make covering tackles – that made Graham so endearing. In England, people would set their alarm clocks for some ungodly hour just to watch ‘Jammer’ because he didn’t care who he was playing against and because you knew to expect some off the wall outburst.
He was a hothead, yes. The odd brain snap was never far away, whether it was the Billy Slater incident in the 2012 grand final or calling Cameron Smith a “cheating c***” in the 2017 World Cup.
He made confrontations such as those with Burgess or Jason King personal. Even with his own teammates he was prepared to let them know when they were in the wrong. Mitchell Brown, Josh Reynolds or Sam Kasiano, we’re looking at you.
But in the most part it was well-intentioned and manifested itself through his intense desire to win at all costs. Fittingly for a red head, Graham was all fire and fury.
Eventually, though, the flames go out. His last 18 months at the Dragons haven’t been at the level he built his reputation on and despite being England’s most capped player he is yet to beat Australia in a Test match.
James Graham reacts after a Dragons trySource: Getty Images
Maybe it’s a failure of both those organisations, rather than Graham himself. After eight years and 186 games in Australia, the closest he has come to glory has been two grand final losses with the Bulldogs.
“I’m not normally a quitter,” he said on Monday. “And I hope this [decision to return to St Helens] doesn’t perceive me as one.”
His international career ended last year with a sickening knockout in a loss to Papua New Guinea. It is only fair and fitting for someone who has served rugby league so well that his club career can finish on his own terms, where it all began.
https://www.foxsports.com.au/nrl/nr...s/news-story/c962990081bfa02354e43eb3dbc913cb
