DIEHARD
08-11-05, 11:35 PM
By Dean Ritchie
There are the card sharks who play for cash. The snorer who wears a mouthguard. The compulsive cleaner. The coach who loses his cufflinks. The reader. The guitar player. And the bloke who refuses to close the bathroom door.
This bizarre mix is the 2005 Kangaroos.
Nearly a fortnight into the tour and some jovial home truths are starting to be revealed: What goes on inside the Kangaroos' rooms, what happens on the bus, who has bad habits and who hangs out with who.
Firstly, there are the card players.
Each player generally takes the same seat on the bus to training each day and there are seats that face one another for the card fanatics.
Ben Kennedy, Craig Gower, Steve Price and Trent Barrett always play and Kennedy and Price are down ?s;20 ($47) to Gower and Barrett in euchre.
Roommates stay the same for the entire tour. There's O'Meley and Civoniceva, Ryan and Creagh, Minichiello and Prince, Cooper and Waterhouse, Kennedy and Buderus, Mason and Price, Tate and Gasnier, Grothe and Fitzgibbon, Gower and King, Hindmarsh and Barrett, O'Donnell and Ryles.
Skipper Lockyer has his own room, as do the Kangaroos staff.
Barrett and Hindmarsh first roomed together on the 2000 tour.
"We get on really well but he snores," Barrett said. "He now wears a mouthguard to stop it which is very thoughtful - and something I'm pretty happy about."
Asked for Barrett's best habit, Hindmarsh says: "He gets me out of bed in the mornings." Asked for Barrett's worst habit, he says: "Getting me out of bed in the mornings."
Tate has a fetish for cleaning. He and Gasnier's room is spotless. But the Dragons centre is concerned.
"He is a clean freak," Gasnier said. "It's bordering on obsessive, compulsive."
Each time the Kangaroos travel, they wear stylish black suits boasting the Australian badge, but Tate and coach Wayne Bennett constantly lose their cufflinks.
Bennett does not sit down at the front of the bus with the other officials - or down the back either.
"He's trying to be cooler by sitting in the middle - but he's still a nerd," team manager Steve Walters said.
Fitzgibbon reads and plays music. At the moment he's reading about Chairman Mao. He brought a guitar on tour which he and roommate Grothe play in their free time. Ryles and O'Meley have iPods.
Ryles and Hindmarsh also walk and play portable PlayStations and Buderus is a keen shopper - snapping up clothes at Manchester's Trafford Centre. Prince and Tate have been hanging out, along with Civoniceva, but there are no cliques.
"You just join in when you hear a group of guys are going to do something," said Gower.
Creagh is taking everything in. O'Donnell hates being interviewed or talking about himself. Lockyer is quiet; Mason always the life of the party.
He saw some media who had enjoyed a night out.
Realising how little this team drinks, Mason said: "You guys have got hangovers again ... it's making me sick."
Source : The Daily Telegraph - http://www.NEWS.com.au
There are the card sharks who play for cash. The snorer who wears a mouthguard. The compulsive cleaner. The coach who loses his cufflinks. The reader. The guitar player. And the bloke who refuses to close the bathroom door.
This bizarre mix is the 2005 Kangaroos.
Nearly a fortnight into the tour and some jovial home truths are starting to be revealed: What goes on inside the Kangaroos' rooms, what happens on the bus, who has bad habits and who hangs out with who.
Firstly, there are the card players.
Each player generally takes the same seat on the bus to training each day and there are seats that face one another for the card fanatics.
Ben Kennedy, Craig Gower, Steve Price and Trent Barrett always play and Kennedy and Price are down ?s;20 ($47) to Gower and Barrett in euchre.
Roommates stay the same for the entire tour. There's O'Meley and Civoniceva, Ryan and Creagh, Minichiello and Prince, Cooper and Waterhouse, Kennedy and Buderus, Mason and Price, Tate and Gasnier, Grothe and Fitzgibbon, Gower and King, Hindmarsh and Barrett, O'Donnell and Ryles.
Skipper Lockyer has his own room, as do the Kangaroos staff.
Barrett and Hindmarsh first roomed together on the 2000 tour.
"We get on really well but he snores," Barrett said. "He now wears a mouthguard to stop it which is very thoughtful - and something I'm pretty happy about."
Asked for Barrett's best habit, Hindmarsh says: "He gets me out of bed in the mornings." Asked for Barrett's worst habit, he says: "Getting me out of bed in the mornings."
Tate has a fetish for cleaning. He and Gasnier's room is spotless. But the Dragons centre is concerned.
"He is a clean freak," Gasnier said. "It's bordering on obsessive, compulsive."
Each time the Kangaroos travel, they wear stylish black suits boasting the Australian badge, but Tate and coach Wayne Bennett constantly lose their cufflinks.
Bennett does not sit down at the front of the bus with the other officials - or down the back either.
"He's trying to be cooler by sitting in the middle - but he's still a nerd," team manager Steve Walters said.
Fitzgibbon reads and plays music. At the moment he's reading about Chairman Mao. He brought a guitar on tour which he and roommate Grothe play in their free time. Ryles and O'Meley have iPods.
Ryles and Hindmarsh also walk and play portable PlayStations and Buderus is a keen shopper - snapping up clothes at Manchester's Trafford Centre. Prince and Tate have been hanging out, along with Civoniceva, but there are no cliques.
"You just join in when you hear a group of guys are going to do something," said Gower.
Creagh is taking everything in. O'Donnell hates being interviewed or talking about himself. Lockyer is quiet; Mason always the life of the party.
He saw some media who had enjoyed a night out.
Realising how little this team drinks, Mason said: "You guys have got hangovers again ... it's making me sick."
Source : The Daily Telegraph - http://www.NEWS.com.au