Wayne Pearce’s greatest gift to his son Mitchell, as champion halfback farewells NRL

With two of rugby league’s fiercest competitors in the one family, it was bound to happen.

Mitchell and Wayne Pearce recall one particular incident, yet still can’t agree on the timeline.

Mitchell says he was probably 15, but Balmain great Wayne reckons his son had already started playing first grade with the Sydney Roosters. He was still a teenager, whoever is right.

“Remember the time you came to the gym with me,” Wayne says, a smile all over his face. It’s clear he still relishes this win.

Mitchell has the ability to laugh at himself but you can tell it hits a nerve somewhere deep down. Wayne continues on anyway.

“He’s come to the gym with me and I’ve been retired for quite a while at this stage. We were doing some squats and he couldn’t quite squat as much as I squatted, so he spat the dummy. He was blowing up.”

Mitchell laughs now.

“Dad was saying, ‘Stop sooking, stop sooking’. He gave me a fair spray for that. That was just me being competitive … it’s probably a good thing.”

Along with a famous last name, he got the blue eyes, tenacity – and a kick up the bum from his dad.

“We’re not intentionally competitive, but in a way where dad probably pushed me,” Mitchell explains.

“I reckon the ego comes into it, that’s a normal relationship between a father and a son.

“If we were sparring together, I’d go for it, and he’d probably still flog me.

“I think that’s healthy. Your dad is supposed to show you the ropes about being a man and being a competitor and being strong, and you try and step up to the plate. That’s where you learn your competitive spirit.”

*****

Here, at a cafe on Sydney’s northern beaches on a slow December morning, two of the biggest names in rugby league sit down to talk about the dynamics of their relationship. They’ve spoken about it individually before, but not sitting side-by-side, where their synchronicity is laid bare.

Over the course of an hour, they look at each other for prompts, list their similarities easily (competitiveness, tenacity), but both pause when asked about their differences.

Finally, Wayne says, “Well, he’s more of a party boy and I don’t drink.”

That much is obvious to anyone who has paid a sliver of attention over the past 15 years.

Mitchell lives in the moment, which can and has gotten him into trouble in the past. But it also means he’s free and generous with his energy, quick to laugh and engaging in conversation.

Wayne is more strategic. He loves a laugh too, and is confident and kind, but he’s a deeper thinker in terms of planning. His own father was an alcoholic and died when Wayne was young, so he just never drank. He’s always considering the bigger picture, which is why he’s perfect to sit on the ARL commission.

At times, their shared surname has been blamed for putting undue pressure on Mitchell. But despite it, he still managed to collect almost every experience the NRL has to offer.

“When I came in, there was no pedigree of rugby league in my family, so there was no pressure on me; but with Mitchell, there’s always been that pressure on him because of the achievements that I had in the game,” Wayne says.

“That’s something he’s handled remarkably well. It’s not pressure he put on himself, it’s the pressure other people, the media and critics put on him.

“And the thing is, he’s a different style of player to me and he’s carved out his own career, and that in itself demonstrates his mental toughness, his focus and his character.”

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This father and son dynamic has been public fodder since Mitchell started playing rugby league at 11. Having a dad in the NRL Hall of Fame comes with a fortuitous gene pool and contact list.

But while most are born with a blank canvas, his dad’s list of achievements were laid out ahead of him like benchmarks to success. Wayne was a poster boy of the 1980s, a role model for the virtues of clean living and wholehearted effort. The teammate everyone wanted to play with.

These were a road map of rugby league goals that, because of his obsessive and competitive personality, just pushed Mitchell harder to achieve. He’s grateful for it.

“Dad came into the sheds after a game in the early days at the Roosters and I remember spraying him, saying, ‘Get out of the sheds’,” he recalls.

“Anthony Minichiello and Craig Wing and a few of the older boys were like, ‘Pearcey, what are you talking about?’

“They were just laughing, thinking it was hilarious. I think I’d had a shit game or something.”

He was fresh into first grade but was already conscious of not getting anything for free. He wanted to be his own man.

“Mitchell was worried subconsciously that he’d got a leg-up because of me, but he didn’t,” Wayne says.

“The thing is, he’s made his career based on a really great work ethic, incredible skill-set and a resilience that I think is beyond reproach. His ability to bounce back from setbacks, injuries, and setbacks off the field as well. He didn’t give himself enough credit for that.”

Mitchell just never wanted to be treated differently. He wanted to, and eventually did, earn his own success.

“I played Australian Schoolboys and there were a few stories in the early days that came out … I was going well, but a lot of the boys were going well and I got a bit more attention,” he says.

“That stuff, I wanted to squash until I’d made my own name. That probably leads into that situation in the sheds (at the Roosters), it was just a bit of an insecurity.

“Everyone has their different complexes; that was my little thing. It was probably what fuelled me as well, it gives you that little bit of a chip on your shoulder to give you some focus. That was a good thing, it makes you motivated.”

*****

One of the biggest differences between the two is their State of Origin experience. Wayne captained NSW to the first-ever clean sweep against Queensland in 1986 and led the Blues in 10 of his 15 appearances.

Mitchell was thrown to the wolves as a 19-year-old halfback in 2008 and didn’t win a series until 2019, the last in his 19-game Origin career. He concedes that he was too young when he debuted, and it burned his confidence to the point where doubts would remerge every time he went into camp.

He shudders remembering the scars of losses against some of the game’s greats: Greg Inglis, Darren Lockyer, Johnathan Thurston, Billy Slater and Cameron Smith.

“These guys were all 25 and you’re there, 19, your head is falling off and you’ve got Darren Lockyer there as the greatest player of all time … it’s a tough ask,” he says.

“You lose confidence. I look at it now, if I was 25 or 26 playing against a skinny 19-year-old, you’d be going, ‘How good’s this?’

“That breaks your confidence, because you’re not mature enough to handle it and then you lose a few games and it adds to the pressure. If you come in a bit later, no one expects as much.

“It gives you little doubts when you go into that environment. You’d play Queensland up there with those guys, and they were good.

“I played a lot of footy over the years and even coming back into Origin (in later years), but those early teams were intimidating. They were big, they were hard to beat. They were freaks. And we were young. We all felt that. We lost so many series.

“You play up there in Queensland when the refs are against you early in some of those deciders, they were just too good.

“They’re bad memories, those games. They’re not good memories. It would have been nice if I came back in an afterlife in another era to start again and get nicer memories of those days, but it is what it is. That was my path.”

So then dad pipes up.

“At least you won a grand final. I lost two, never won one,” he says, recalling his own painful memories.

“He played his guts out and that’s one thing you’re always going to get from Mitchell, he’ll give 100 per cent.”

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And that’s how Mitchell knew it was time for a new challenge. He leaves for France on December 28 after being granted a release from Newcastle. He starts pre-season with Catalans a few days later.

At 32, it brings to an end his 309-game NRL career spanning 15 seasons; four years and 117 games longer than his dad’s.

He’s been chasing perfection for long enough and the weight of the modern game, with all its statistics and technology and the new media landscape, has become too much to bear.

“It does get tiring after a while, just all of it,” he says.

“You put so much into your career, playing for so long. Dad said the same thing after 11 years … it does become very heavy.

“I still love [the game] and want to compete and win, but you get to an age where the weight of it all, the way the game is now and the attention of it all, it’s time for a new challenge.”

Mitchell looks at Wayne, who nods and finishes the thought.

“You don’t lose the energy, but you just have to channel the energy in the right way,” he says.

“You get to a stage where the edge is starting to go and, ‘What do I do to harness the energy in the right way?’”

*****

In this moment, just before everything changes again, father and son are able to reflect. They circle back to those genetics and how blessed they both are.

Two different champions from two generations in one family.

“I appreciate that I’ve been given high standards from my parents,” Mitchell says.

“You can’t fake that. You can act like you care or you can go to footy training and look like you give a f--k, but if you don’t care, you don’t last if you don’t have that fight. I’ll have that always.

“If I’m down at the park playing touch, I want to beat everyone. It’s who I am. That’s the gift I’m grateful for more than anything because that’s what stands the test of time.

“Even though it’s tiring sometimes, I’d rather that than be someone who doesn’t give a shit.”

As patriarch and a rugby league icon, Wayne may have set standards, but Mitchell was never really guided by their shared surname.

He was only ever chasing a better version of himself.