On rugby league, sport, and the story I most want to tell next.
I've been a rugby league fan for as long as I can remember. It started with a sharks card in my older brother's collection — I was obsessed with sharks as a kid, saw there was a team called the Sharks, and that was that. No question.
My roots, though, lie with the Panthers. My dad was born in Springwood and has been a lifelong Penrith supporter. Living in the Blue Mountains now, it's hard not to get caught up in it all — though I'm conscious of not wanting to come across as a bandwagoner.
I watch every game I can. Not just the Panthers, not just the Sharks — every game. Because what I love about rugby league isn't allegiance, it's craft. A well-executed set, a defensive line that holds under pressure, the individual skill moments that happen in the middle of a contest that most people miss. I watch rugby league the way I watch a well-made film — for what's happening beneath the surface.
I've shot basketball, surfing, skateboarding and indoor soccer. Basketball led to American Candy — a three-part documentary series following young athletes from regional NSW on their first USA exposure tour, where they quickly find out that basketball (and candy) in America is very different to what they're accustomed to. It streams now on SBS On Demand.
On the commercial side I've produced event films for two consecutive WSL surfing events for Camplify — the Great Lakes Pro (QS 3,000, Boomerang Beach, 2023) and the Port Stephens Pro (QS 1,000, 2024).
Across all of it, my instinct is the same: find the human story inside the sport. The subtle details. The moments broadcast coverage is too busy to stop for.
I've always operated under the 50/50 partnership of finding the story and allowing the story to find me. The right opportunity hasn't presented itself and until recently I hadn't really been looking.
But I've been thinking about it more seriously. The story that pulls at me is the same one that led to American Candy — the importance of development and nurturing talent in regional areas. How overlooked athletes, given the right resources and the right environment, can achieve things that surprise everyone except the people who believed in them from the start.
Western Sydney and the greater Penrith region produce rugby league talent at a rate that's genuinely extraordinary. The Panthers' development pathway is arguably the most successful in the NRL. But below the first grade team — in the SG Ball, the Harold Matthews, the Flegg, the NSW Cup — there are stories happening every week that nobody is telling.
That's where I want to point a camera.
Not highlights. Not broadcast-style coverage. Something slower, more considered — the kind of filmmaking that sits with a player in a quiet moment, that finds the coach choosing their words carefully before a big game, that notices what's happening on the sideline while everyone else is watching the ball.
The human moments. The subtle details. The stuff that tells you who someone really is.
If you're working in rugby league — at a club, a pathways program, a junior association, or as a sponsor — and you think there's a story worth telling, I'd genuinely like to hear about it.
Whether it's rugby league or something else entirely — I'd like to hear it.
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