Charlie Gamble still remembers being dirty when Bernard Foley kicked truly and won the 2014 Super Rugby title for NSW.
“I was pissed off. I was on the lounge at home, and being born and bred in Christchurch, I was obviously a massive Crusaders fan,” Gamble says.
“But now I look at that and think ‘nice’ – it’s funny how the tables turn, eh?”
And after one of the more incredible journeys that saw the former teenage rugby star from Christchurch playing subbies rugby in Sydney, Gamble will start for the Tahs against his boyhood club, the Crusaders, on Saturday.
“It is one of those ones, when the fixtures come out at the start of the year you want to pencil that one and hope that you’re playing,” Gamble said.
“There are a lot of boys in that team that I know, and the Crusaders have been the pinnacle for a long time, so it’ll be an honour to play against them. I am keen to rip in.”
It has been a thoroughly unique path to Leichhardt Oval for Gamble, and a clash with the Crusaders team he spent the first 20 years of his life obsessing about; first as a standard, rugby-mad Cantabrian tyke, and then as star junior player who spent three years in the first XV of prestigious school St Bede’s College. He was only 14 in his first game and won man of the match.
Gamble was one of those kids – he also competed for New Zealand at a Youth Olympics in discus – and no one was shocked when the Crusaders invited him to join their academy when he left school in 2013. The production line for Super Rugby’s most dominant franchise was deliberately demanding, with training at 6am and again in the afternoons for four days a week. Of those who don’t wash out, over three-quarters of the academy go on to become professionals.
Richie Mo’unga was just finishing up when Gamble’s class began, which included names like George Bridge and Braydon Ennor.
“Because if you can’t do it then, you won’t be able to do it later,” Gamble said.
“The discipline and just the drive and motivation that the boys train with over there is extremely high, and I definitely still carry values that I learned back then. I definitely saw people come through and get spat out, so I guess you definitely have that mentality that you are professional, right now at that age.”
Gamble played openside for Canterbury under 19s and the Crusaders’ Knights team (the franchise’s B side) and life was good. One day in 2015, as part of a mentoring program, Gamble found himself in a coffee shop soaking up the knowledge of Richie McCaw.
“The staff told me take your laptop, take your notebook, be professional,” Gamble said.
“But then I got there he goes ‘mate, you don’t need any of that – let’s just chat’.
“From the outside everyone thinks he is a bit of a robot, but he is a good bloke and, for him, it was always just down to hard work and determination. That’s what I remember taking out of it, was how hard you have to work.”
If McCaw cracked open a dog-eared book of dark arts, Gamble isn’t telling. But he was confident of taking the next step in following McCaw’s footsteps by making the New Zealand under-20s squad in 2016, under then-coach Scott Robertson, who is now the Crusaders coach. Particularly after winning player of the tournament for Canterbury in a lead-up national under-19s event.
But after playing poorly in an under-20s trial, Robertson didn’t pick Gamble and the snub sent the youngster into a tailspin.
“It was a dream to play for my country in the 20s, and the expectation around me, after winning that player of the tournament, was ‘OK, he must be a shoo-in to make under 20s’,” Gamble said.
“So to not make it and the pressure of all that, for whatever reason, from my family and friends, was pretty tough for me as a young fella. I probably thought I was a bit better than what I was, and when things didn’t happen I just started to blame everyone else. Was I working hard enough? Probably not. If I could go back in time I would do things differently, but you can’t. So, you live and you learn, and it is all part of my journey.”
A long-term foot injury followed and Gamble admits he kept “sulking”. He contemplated returning to discus before he decided the best thing would be for he and girlfriend Annie seek a fresh start outside the Christchurch bubble. Gamble hit up contacts, put his CV on a rugby website, and was approached on Facebook with the offer of a gig at Petersham rugby club, in Sydney, and a part-time delivery job.
“We made the decision and flew over here inside two weeks. It was really fast, I had lived in Christchurch my whole life so I thought why not? Let’s have a year off, enjoy Sydney, do something different,” Gamble said.
Petersham is not a top-tier club; rather an outfit that plays in the NSW Suburban Rugby competition. “Subbies” is a division down – and a world away – from the Shute Shield and the Sydney grade comp.
The story goes that Gamble didn’t know the “Shammies” was park footy, but he did. And after falling out of love with rugby, the old-school, beer-as-hydration traditions of subbies rugby was exactly the experience he needed.
