About six months earlier, Australian coach Bob Fulton had phoned Gould and asked if Fittler — who was a teenager but had already played for NSW and was headed towards a possible premiership with Penrith that 1990 season — was ready to take the next step. “Is Freddy too young to take on the Kangaroo tour?” Fulton asked. “He won’t be playing any Tests.” “Nah, mate,” Gould replied. “He’s pretty special, he’ll be right.” Gould pulled his prodigy aside before the plane departed for the tour of Great Britain and France. “You’ll be going over there for experience,” Gould warned. “Don’t play up, don’t make a fool out of yourself, watch and learn.”

Fittler played three matches against English club teams, making him the youngest Kangaroos tourist in history. Loading After eight weeks away, he returned to Penrith 10 kilograms overweight and much of it from the large chip residing on one of his shoulders. Reluctantly, Gould allowed him to take a short holiday to the Gold Coast with some mates over the Australia Day long weekend, but made it clear he was to front pre-season training on Tuesday morning. Tuesday came and went. Then Wednesday. On Thursday night, Fittler finally phoned the coach.

“Gussy!” Fittler said. “What time’s training tomorrow?” “7am,” Gould said. “The boys said it was eight.” “7am for you.” Clunk!

On Thursday morning, Fittler crawled out of his mate’s place with a stinging hangover, onto the back of his mate’s dirt bike, and then zipped towards Penrith Park. He was riding up on the median strip and doing bunny-hops before screeching into the carpark in a cloud of dust, right before Gould’s bulging eyes. Fittler was wearing a singlet, shorts, thongs and headband. “How you goin’, Gussy?!” Fittler said. “I’ll give you f--ken Gussy. Come with me. Coach’s room.” So now Fittler is pinned to the wall, Gould ready to deliver some home truths. That he was a big head. That he was fat. That he was getting ahead of himself.

“Burn that f--ken bike,” Gould says. “I never want to see it again. Next time I see you, I want you to look like a footballer.” Fittler leaves the room, in tears. He skulks out of Penrith Park, onto the back of his mate’s dirt bike and quietly rides away. At 7.58am the next day, Fittler drives sensibly into the carpark. He's driving his mum's car. He's wearing spotless training gear. “How do I look?” he asks Gould. “Beautiful,” says the coach, shaking his head. “Let’s go.”

There in black and white: Fittler in action for the Panthers in 1990. Credit:Fairfax Archive Almost three decades later, Fittler identifies this as the turning point of his career. Gould recalls it differently. “That was one turning point,” he says. “He had to take a few corners to get where he is now. But he’s always been a very special person.” Then this: “Best spray I’ve ever given.” When I tell Fittler this, he giggles. “There weren’t any bunny-hops when I left that day. As a young bloke, I was just along for the ride — and I was good at it. I was so into footy. Whatever the team was doing, I was into it. A lot of it revolved around alcohol. All of a sudden you had to juggle balls because you were drinking too much. But I never did anything that was out of line. I don’t think I ever went the wrong way.”

No, Fittler went the right way, winning a premiership at Penrith, captaining the Roosters to another, playing and captaining both Australia and NSW. His long-time manager, Wayne Beavis, is cranky Fittler isn’t in the Immortal debate. That’s footy, though. Loading Away from that, he drinks herbal teas, meditates, does yoga and, since the start of the year, been on a vegan diet. Tuesday night’s bonding session with the Blues was his first taste of alcohol this year. A few weeks ago, Roosters chairman Nick Politis sat next to Fittler on a flight to Brisbane.

"Freddy, what's that?" Politis asked when the hostess plonked a special meal in front of him. "I've gone vegan, Nick. You should try it." Politis, who recalls when Fittler preferred bourbon and Coke, shook his head. Fittler tends to the llamas on his Sydney property where he lives with his delightful wife, Marie, and equally delightful children, Demi and Zach; he cracks jokes on the sideline for Channel Nine; he reads books about ancient philosophers and listens in his car to podcasts from the spiritual teacher Eckhart Tolle. He’s an environmentalist, a humanitarian and does more unseen charity work than the public will ever know.

He once called Beavis late at night. “I want to donate $3000 to the Save the Elephants fund,” he said. “You WHAT!” the veteran player agent barked. Fittler is an evolved human who has arrived at the perfect train stop of his life to take on the toughest job in rugby league and quite possibly Australian sport: coaching NSW. “He’s not a follower,” Gould says. “He’s his own man. When he was young, he stepped out of the crease plenty of times but he was always honest. You didn’t have to go searching for the truth. He apologised and never did it again. He’s taken on this task as coach of NSW. It’s an enormous job, with enormous pressure. But everything he’s done so far has brought him to here.”

There are two moments that helped shaped Fittler as a man. Big-hearted: Fittler is a tireless charity worker, raising funds through the annual Hogs for the Homeless motorbike ride. Credit:NSWRL He was raised by his mum, Christine, after his father, Robbie, a truck driver, upped and left on a road train for Darwin before Fittler was born. “Other people would be able to tell you if that changed me," he says. "I am what I am. I just get on with it. Footy played a huge part for me, just by being there. I look at my own kids … getting attention is important. I was getting a lot of attention because I was a good footy player. That helps you through. You become the focus because you’re good at footy. And where I grew up it was really important. White kid growing up in Ashcroft [in Sydney’s south-west], everyone played footy, and I was good at it. If I look at the psychology of why things weren’t that hard it’s most probably because I was good at footy.” The other profound influence on his life was the death of his close friend Ben Alexander, the younger brother of halfback Greg Alexander, who is on Fittler’s NSW coaching staff. These aren’t former teammates to Fittler. They are family. Ben Alexander — “Boods” as he was known — was killed in a car accident in 1992. “It made me stop drink-driving,” says Fittler, who four years later joined Gould at the Roosters.

In August 2007, three years after his retirement, he found himself coaching, taking over from Chris Anderson, who cited health reasons for his departure. Fittler stood at the back of the coach’s box during matches and ate muffins, cheering along with the rest of us in the adjacent press area. He was bunny-hopping through the stress of being the head coach. He made Braith Anasta captain and squeezed the best out of him. Fittler often deflects his footy intelligence — “I just tell them to run!” he says — but he’d devise trick shots for his Roosters players. Team first: Fittler's Blues squad is packed with youth. Credit:AAP “We scored so many times down a short-side because of something Freddy had come up with,” Anasta says.

In 2008, the Roosters went as far as the second week of the finals. By July, 2009, it had all gone sour. His side was last. He’d developed excruciating mouth ulcers because of the stress. He became surly with the media. Being a coach was turning the game’s biggest kid into an arsehole. His best mate, Rogan Yates, got on the phone one day. “You’re a nightmare,” he told him, according to Fittler. Politis asked Gould if he would step in and help. Gould declined but visited Fittler at his home, ready to give it to him straight, just as he had in the coach’s room at Penrith Park all those years ago, but softer this time. “It’s over, mate,” Gould told him. “You’ve got to give this away.” “I know it’s over,” Fittler said. “I’ve got no control over them. They aren’t responding.”

“So, give it away.” “No, I’ll never give up on anything. I know what’s going to happen. If they want me to go they have to sack me.” For the next two hours, Gould tried to sway him. He wouldn’t budge. In the end, Fittler’s contract wasn’t renewed. “I’d lost the dressing-room long before that season,” Fittler says. “I lost it after Origin the year before. We were 12 from 15, winning the comp, then Braith, Mitchell [Pearce], Fitzy [Craig Fitzgibbon], Willie [Mason] … They were pretty much blamed for NSW’s loss. They sledge-hammered those blokes. I just didn’t realise. I didn’t know what they were going through. It all went to shit. That next pre-season, you could tell it was going to be a train crash.” What did he learn from the experience?

“When I first started coaching the Roosters, I said, ‘Unless you put the team first you are going to have another coach but the same result’.” He bursts into laughter. “Then I got sacked! The one thing I didn’t realise then was that I was learning more in the bad times than the good times. It became glaringly obvious what I was learning about myself.” Gould knows precisely what Fittler learned. “I was quite angry about what some of those players did to him,” Gould says. “That’s where he learned about selfishness. That’s the first real example of selfishness he’d seen. And he’s never been about that. He’s always been about team and family. He was all for the club, all for the coach. But he realised what sort of coach he was and what sort of coach he wasn’t. He realised he had to be himself. He had to do it his way.

“I never thought he’d coach again but it’s taken him a long way towards the philosophy he’s taken in selecting this NSW team. It reflects his values. If they win, he’ll take no credit. If they lose, he will take it on his own head. He won’t have any elaborate game plans. He’ll tell them, ‘This is what Origin is: you either do it or you don’t. If you don’t, we will perish. This is what I know of it …'” The weekly grind of the NRL chewed up Fittler and spat him out. Surely, Origin could do the same? Just ask Laurie Daley, who went into hibernation after the Blues lost last year’s series. “I can’t hide,” Fittler grins. “I’m on the sideline for Nine for Friday Night Footy two days later!” He spends hours on the sidelines. In the first round this season, Fittler was back at Penrith Park — although it’s a stadium now — minutes before Penrith played the Eels. He had a ball in his hands, like he always does, kicking it to himself, looking over the turf like he was about to play. “I do take time out in those moments on the field,” he says. “I recognise that a lot of people don’t get the chance to do this. Sometimes, I can stand there and not feel like anyone is watching me. I am mindful of how lucky I’ve been.”