Fittler's chance to complete his collection
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Your support makes all the difference.For Brad Fittler, the rugby league player who has everything, next Friday's World Club Challenge against St Helens represents the only prize he has never won.
The former Australian Test captain, who will lead the Sydney City Roosters at Bolton's Reebok Stadium, has lifted every trophy with club and country bar this one and missed out on the chance to compete for when younger.
"I was supposed to come here with Penrith in 1991, but I was called up to be with Australia in Papua New Guinea," he recalls. "I played my first Test out there, but I think the World Club Challenge was treated a bit different in those days from what it is now."
Penrith viewed it as an end-of-season trip and were soundly beaten at Anfield, but since then the WCC has grown in stature. It is one that now means something to Australian players, because the Roosters were talking about it as soon as they beat the New Zealand Warriors in their Grand Final last year.
"I always figured that if I was going to be in a World Club game, I would want to prepare well for it," says Fittler. "After all, someone gets to go home and say they are world champions."
That was an accolade that eluded his coach, Ricky Stuart, in his club career. In 1989, he was in the Canberra side beaten by Widnes at Old Trafford. "We came over only three days before the game," he says. "It would have taken longer than that to get over the trip and the guys were tired."
Stuart was not prepared to run that risk this time. His squad arrived on Thursday night, albeit after a gruelling 40 hour journey via Melbourne, Singapore, Dubai and a six-hour coach ride from London, and has all the preparation time it could want.
Stuart has been frustrated in his attempts to play a warm-up, the lack of which has been cited by some as why their last two contenders, Brisbane and Newcastle, lost the fixture. But Stuart says there will be no complaints from him if Saints make it three in a row for Britain.
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