Damian Willis holding the Group 9 challenge cup after the Diesels game vs Wagga on the weekend.
Damian Willis has had a storied country rugby league career, whether it be his time up north in the Queensland Cup chasing his NRL dreams, or his premiership-winning efforts at Gundagai and Batemans Bay, Willis has always led by example both on and off the field.
Now Damian finds himself no longer a young man, but still the same fit, tenacious and ambitious one that saw him move all around the country playing the game he loves. Being the tender age of 41, you would be right to assume that the man may finally have fallen out of love with the game and hung his boots up, but his wife Emma still finds herself picking them up off of the floor after his 80-minute shifts in the centres for the Diesels.
It’s been a long road for the Junee boy, but as they say, all roads lead to home and that’s exactly where Damian’s brought him back to.
“I started playing footy when I was about ten. I played footy for Junee until I was 17. Then I went off to Sydney and went to Parramatta for a couple of years and then ended up in Bateman’s Bay playing for the Tigers,” Damian said.
“I went there (Batemans Bay) on a holiday and got approached walking down the street, had a conversation and the next thing you knew I was down in Bateman’s Bay playing footy.
“I didn’t want to go back to Parramatta at that stage, so I ended up playing First Grade down there, made the Country Under 18s team and got picked up by the (St George Illawarra) Dragons.
“Went down there for a couple of seasons, had another year in local league and we won the First Grade grand final in 2005 and then picked up and moved to Queensland and played a season of Queensland Cup and that was in 2006 and then came back to Junee from 2007 to 2012.
“I coached the Junee First Grade side in 2012. Then spend the last 10 years playing for Gundagai. It feels like I’ve retired five times in that time,” Willis joked.
Willis was once again willed out of retirement from footy in 2024 when his cousin Daniel Foley asked him to come help coach their hometown Diesels.
“Last year when Daniel got the coaching job for Junee and asked me if I’d be able to help him out. Of course, I said yes, and we then went into battle for 12 months. Then at the back end of last year, Junee signed Chase Bernard and Ben Shea as coaches and they’re stuck over in France playing championship one in the French league so they asked me if I could be the interim coach until those boys get here,” he continued.
“When I was playing at Gundagai I had a few injury problems, I was a little bit overweight and wasn’t really enjoying myself. When you’re not enjoying your footy you sort of contemplate, especially being an older bloke, chucking it in and not really wanting to play and then the preseason rolls around and you lose a bit of weight and you get fit again and that’s probably what keeps happening to me. If I worked hard and had a good preseason and off-season I come back better.
“It’s usually the young blokes that keep you pretty motivated, the camaraderie that you develop with your teammates in the club that you play for is probably the main reason why I kept coming back, especially at Gundagai.
“Being so successful at the time with a tiny group, it was easy to reverse the decision (of retirement) and go back and play footy. After the grand final in 2022, I sort of knew that that sort of run was going to come to an end eventually and I sat out the whole 2023 season. I didn’t play, I didn’t coach.
“I didn’t do anything really, sort of mucked around with the juniors a little bit and then Daniel asked me and it went from being just a helper to can you play West Wyalong Knockout, can you play against Gulgong in a trial, can you play against Yanco Wamoon in a trial and the next thing you know I’m starting the season off in First Grade playing in the centres.
“I didn’t have too many intentions of playing this year but with the centre stock pretty low at our club, I felt as though I had to play, especially until these other two blokes get here and hopefully if I can tough it out for the first seven or eight rounds and keep the body in check, then I’ve done my job”
Willis looks forward to welcoming the Club’s new coaches when the time comes.
“The agreement that we’ve got is that I will coach the side up until they (Bernard and Shea) get here, then I will hand over the reins to them and still be here in the coaching staff capacity but all the things we have worked on this year and implemented has come from Ben and Chase, I’m just the conduit at the moment, just getting the things done that they want done and having a little bit of input of my own.
“It’s probably a very similar role to what I had last year, but they are half a world away and they don’t get to see the training and things like that, they watch all our videos of our games and stuff like that and have some things to say and some things to work on, it’s not ideal but it’s what we’ve got at the moment and hopefully they stick around beyond this year and have a proper preseason with the boys and are able to do the things that they want to do.
“Success in footy brings a different type of culture. If you are losing all the time, it brings your head down. If you work hard, generally speaking, good things come to you and they’re the type of things that I’ve tried to instil within the boys, the standard that you walk past is the standard that you accept. If you see a bloke not putting in or turning up to training and you don’t say anything to that person you just allow that low standard to become the norm then you’re not going to be successful, things like being prepared for games of football, your whole week surrounds you thinking about the game, your preparation, your diet, your training, doing your extras, and coming to the footy on Sunday or Saturday, you need to prepare for what’s about to happen.
“That’s what I’m trying to tell them. I have spoken to the boys about changing their way of thinking and improving their commitment and their skill sets and doing their extras to get a little bit fitter and get that edge on other teams where blokes in other clubs might not be working as hard and they are going to put themselves in the right stead to potentially be successful. The signs are there and I think we’ve moved leaps and bounds from what we were last year we struggled quite badly with players and we had a number of our recruits go down to season-ending injuries right at the first half of the season. Towards the back end hurt us with player availability.”
Willis hopes his side can continue to show improvement off the back of two impressive performances, albeit only grabbing two points from an available four.
“We started the season relatively well, we won a trial game, we played well in patches in trials and last weekend we were probably the better side for 50 minutes of the game. Our second half wasn’t crash hot, they scored three tries relatively easy in quick succession and our heads were down and we just couldn’t come back for that,” he continued.
“Southcity is a bit of a dark horse this year. I said in my comments at the Group Nine season launch, that Southcity will be up there or thereabouts. They have got a good forward pack, they have got the experience of Col McCarthy and Clint McGee and those guys. “In hindsight, I was happy with how we played to a degree but just felt as though that ten or fifteen-minute lapse cost us.
“It’s probably been our form in the last two seasons. Our first half could be great, a complete high and control the game to a degree and be there or thereabouts and then the second half we wane quite badly and that’s where a lot of the teams that we played last year, especially the top sides got us and then put a bit of a score on us as well.”
A Group 9 veteran, Damian believes the competition has come back to other competitions in terms of level, believing Covid played a huge part in the slight drop off.
“We were watching a few of our old games from 2015 and we were playing for Gundagai and myself, Cam Woo, Phil Latu and Vincent Brown who played plenty of years for Gundy, and we all sort of agreed that the competition isn’t as strong as it used to be.
I feel our 2015 side that played in Gundagai would dominate the competition. Everyone was in their prime and we only lost one game that year too, I think the competition has gone not exactly backwards but definitely not forward. It was probably Covid. Having the ability to bring people in from other competitions and the work, there’s hardly any work out here. It’s a hard combination.
“It’s hard to bring people outside the groups to be an attractive sea change, especially if you live on the coast. I mean, I wouldn’t want to come back to Junee if I didn’t have the choice to or back to Wagga and when you live on the coast there are too many premier competitions where you’ve got Sydney Shield, Ron Massey Cup and the NSW Cup and you have Illawarra League and Newcastle and the Canberra competitions and those competitions are very high end and they are looking after their players in terms of money and work and things like that and it’s hard to compete with that type of money and our way for one or two players and for Junee especially, we are trying to grow our stocks within Juniors and stuff like that and that is the best you could do really unless you’ve got an unlimited chequebook and decent employment and accommodation. That is probably why the competition hasn’t kicked on as much because we are just not attracting enough quality players from outside the Group to make it that premier competition.”
-Tully Potts
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