Brendan Cowell’s love of The Sharks can be traced back to his days in the U6s. He reckons it’s high time they got a personalised Viking clap…
Hello: my name is Brendan Cowell, and I am a Sharks supporter. It has not been an easy journey by any means, but I try me best to stay positive, and take it one season at a time.
Growing up in Cronulla there are a few things you don’t have a say in, and one is that you go for the Sharks. The others are that “God is good and surely exists,” and “The Shire is the best place to live on Earth and if you don’t think so then get out.”
I think I was four when I started playing Under 6’s for De La Salle Caringbah, the same club that unearthed such Sharks legends as Andrew “ET” Ettingshausen, Sam Stonestreet and Adam Dykes. I don’t remember Dad asking me, I just remember putting the blue, red and yellow jumper on, and driving to Endeavour oval on Saturday at 8am with oranges and Dencorub in my bag.
When I was 10, ET came to our school and did a clinic, and his physique and confidence and mere presence stunned me in ways I cannot explain. I wanted to be at Shark Park so bad after that, and when my sister started dating a reserve-grade player, we got good tickets. Watching on from the halfway line, I dreamt of playing on the hallowed turf one day. And I did: I got my chance in an Under 14’s rep game, but my jumpy, ineffective showing at outside centre meant I was not invited back. I preferred the emotional toil of the drama room to those big, hairy knees jutting into my delicate thespian face.
And so I was to declare myself a fan. A Sharks fan. For the game was now in my blood, and Shark Park was my favourite place on Earth. My spiritual home. For decades after my public retirement from league at the age of 15, I would head on up that swampy hill, knowing I would see a few friends from school and rejoin the banter of Shark, that blend of blind faith and dark humour.
For a true fan is rusted on and they ride the dark years as much as they relish the golden ones. My best memories are of going with Dad a lot before I went to uni. It was when Kimmorley and Dykes were the halves, Preston Campbell was with us, Peachey and ET at their best. At that time, I was 100% sure we would win. And we should have! If it wasn’t for Nathan Blacklock and Anthony Mundine stealing a finals berth from within the Sharks’ jaws that torrid day at Concord.
I remember my mate’s brother Paul Coady, another De La Salle graduate and handy Oztag player, throwing his Sharks towel in and deeming himself retired from the heartache after that game. But then March came along, and we were back on that hill: talking about how this year really could be “the one”. And oh, there was one. I’m not sure if you know this, but we won the thing in 2016 – the greatest year of my life!
I’ve been involved with the Sharks media side of things from time to time. When Ricky Stuart was at the helm I was invited into the sheds a lot, and hosted awards things and cruises and raffles, etc. Funnily enough, I watched more footy than ever once I started living in the UK – simply because it is on in the morning there, when an actor has very little on.
I made a TV show called Plum, about a Sharks player: filming at the club, pretending to be one of the legends, I’d be lying if I said it wasn’t a bit of a dream come true. Sometimes you have to go round the backway to fulfil your dreams…
The first thing I find frustrating about the Sharks is that I wish we had a big stadium in the middle of Caringbah or Sutherland, somewhere that 30,000 people could go to, and which led on to a train station for easy access. Surely if The Shire is the best place to live on Earth, then they’d have that?
The second is that I feel like we could have our own version of the Viking Clap. Namely, “The Chomp”. The game day experience is not classy at Shark Park because the speakers are all stuffed and it is too loud, but also because we don’t have a galvanising moment. If all the fans put their hands up in the shape of a shark’s mouth, and after three beats of the Jaws theme the entire colosseum slapped their jaws shut and yelled “chomp!”… Wow. How good would that be?
I also think the team doesn’t like winning enough. When we get ahead, we don’t get more ahead. Maybe it’s because if we end up losing, then the beach and the bars and the babes are so close by, it’s not that big of a worry? Other than those petty concerns… Go Sharks. Chomp.
Published in Ed#743
Brendan Cowell is an award-winning writer, director and actor. His work spans stage, screen and fiction, including The Slap, Plum and Avatar.
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