I was lucky enough to catch up over Zoom with former Reds and Wallabies prop and two time World Cup champion Dan Crowley! I enjoyed hearing his thoughts about the current game, our awesome Reds team and even his advice for rugby players that want to become World Cup holders themselves. I am positive you’ll enjoy reading our conversation!
Hey Dan, Thanks for making time to catch up. How many old rugby games have you watched over the last few months?
Ah Tom actually, I’ve never been a person to really go over all the old rugby matches. My son, who’s also called Tom, he’s into watching a heap of different ones and is very quick to point out where I made mistakes.
It’s an interesting time for the sport right now. What’s your perspective on the future of rugby and what we need to do, moving forward?
That’s a big question, I wish I had all the time to answer it. I think out of a crisis, as Winston Churchill said, there’s opportunity that comes out of it. I think the opportunity from rugby’s perspective, is hopefully to go back, reset and really look at where we’ve come from, what we do well, what we can take from that and do better. Over a period of time, I think Australian rugby in general has been a bit like in a frog in a pot of water that boils, gets warmer and warmer and it’s not until it’s boiling that it realises it has a problem. You can tinker around the edges little by little, but we haven’t made the big changes that we’ve needed to make and as a result, we are where we are now.
But if we can peal it back and look at where we’ve come from… Others have said if the Wallabies are going strong, the rest of the country will go strong. I think it’s actually the other way round. I think if club rugby is strong across the country, then our state rugby and our provinces are going to be strong and if our provinces are going to be strong, then our Wallabies will be strong.
I think that’s where we’ve lost our way. So I’m hoping that we can put our focus back into making club rugby strong and as a result of that, our Wallabies can get back to winning.
What excites you the most, about the Queensland Reds right now?
As Reds lovers, we can be a bit impatient, but as lot of people have said, we’ve got a great crop of young fellas coming through. It’s a pity we’ve had a stop in playing, but if you have a look at a number of these young players coming through and they are getting a grasp of what it takes to win football, but also to win tight games of rugby. In the past, they’ve lost by that last try, the last 10 minutes, the last 3 points, where as they’re starting to turn that around and actually do that to other sides. As they say, if they can keep that unit of guys together, I think that we will have a good team, not only this year, but I think we’ll start to see in the next couple of years these guys who have got that 3-4 or 5 years of experience, they’ll really start to gell and be a good team.
You played 125 games for the Reds. What’s your favourite on-field memory, from your days playing for Queensland?
I don’t know if on-field was the best memories, I think that the best memories for me were after the game being in the shed. I say that because being in the group of 20 men out on the paddock, giving it their all, knowing when you got back in the shed, whether you won or you lost, whether you were happy or not, being there and knowing you got in the battle and coming back in, that was the best part of it. When you’re playing, you didn’t really get much time to think “how good is this”. You always just sort of get your breathe and get to the next part of the game.
At the time, I didn’t appreciate the opportunity and how privileged we were. The opportunity to go around the world, not only with your work, but with the work that you love doing and with a group of mates. And I think at the time, sometimes you don’t take into account how lucky you are to do that. But the older you get, the more you’ve been away, the more you realise how privileged you were.
What was it like playing, while the rugby world was transitioning into the “professional era”?
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| Dan published a book with this title in 2006 |
It was an interesting time. Especially during the time when there was a lot of talk in back alleyways and meetings about whether or not you were going to stay with the Australian Rugby Union or whether you were going to go to the WRC - the World Rugby Corp. It was very close at that time - I think rugby came within a whisker of going to WRC. It would be interesting to see what would have happened, if it did go down that path as an international game. In the transition across to professionalism, I think it’s easy in hindsight to say it could have been done differently. Rugby could have looked at how League and other professional games have done it and taken a leaf out of their book, instead of working it out ourselves.
For me personally, it was an interesting time, because I had full-time work and I thought “I’m only an injury away from not playing rugby again”. So I said I’m going to hold down a full-time job and play rugby as well, whereas other people gave up their work to focus purely on rugby. I’m very happy I went down that path. Obviously, in this day and age, the commitment required as a professional footballer is a lot more than it was for us, but still I’d like to see that little bit of opportunity for professional guys to be involved in the business world, to give them a bit more of a kick-off.
I won’t ask you about your job as an undercover cop, because I know that’s a secret. But.. what was it like balancing work and rugby?
It wasn’t designed that way - I actually finished with the police in ’95, I started a business throughout that period, which is the business I’ve still got now.
On that front, there’s so many business’s out there that would welcome with open arms the guys if they said “I want to work X amount of hours per week” to understand what you guys do, before they eventually finish playing rugby. I think it’s really important before they go into the world - and it might take em’ two or three starts before they actually know what they’re passionate about, besides what they were passionate about before, which is footy and then transition into something else, in the business world. A lot of guys struggle to know what their next phase of life is going to be. I think it’s a good precursor, even if it’s for free, just to understand what they enjoy and what they don’t enjoy.
What originally inspired you to play rugby?
Well, my parents came from England many many years ago, back in the 50s and I’ve got two older brothers that both played rugby… So when I was around eight years old, two of my good mates were playing for Souths and they dragged me down to the under-8s. That was where my rugby started and I loved it. I was fortunate to play with some great guys and then make my way into a couple of rep teams. I played with Souths all the way through to when I was around thirty-five I think.
What is your greatest rugby memory, in general? Feel free to include anything from your debut for the Wallabies against the Lions, through to the two world cups that you won for Australia.
I think, getting to tell your old man that your picked for the Australia team, that was pretty special. That’s probably a highlight for me from a rugby perspective. On the field, I was involved in the World Cups, but I wasn’t one of the major players in those areas. So playing with some fantastic players and saying “I know those guys” has always been really good. And off the field, to say you’ve met people literally from the Queen, Nelson Mandela, Princess Di, some big names, all from rugby! That’s the beauty of our international game. Winning World Cups is fantastic. But it’s going to the dinner after the 1999 World Cup with your mates, it’s pretty special. It’s a memory that you don’t forget.
What’s one piece of advice for rugby players that one day hope to hold that World Cup?
Good question. By best advice is keep on plugging away. You don’t have to be the best player, it’s the person that’s willing to keep forging ahead and keep doing what others won’t do.
There’s plenty of other guys that are a lot more talented and a lot more skilled that have gone before me when I was playing, but they weren’t willing to continually put in the hard yards and the extras, that people don’t see. It’s not what people see, it’s what you’re doing behind the scenes at 5 o’clock in the morning or 7 o’clock at night, continually making yourself better and never giving in. From a playing perspective, it’s not the guy that plays a blinder when everything’s going well and he shines, it’s the guy who digs in when things aren’t going well, that’s the person that I look for. The person that will not give up. You’ve got to show that resilience off the field - do what other people won’t do. If you can do that - you’ll go a long way.
Thank you very much for taking the time for this interview!
It’s been my absolute pleasure Tom, thank you.
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