For a town nearly 150km from Sydney with a population of just 12,000, there’s an impressive rollcall of successful individuals who’ve called Bowral home at one time or another.
There’s the musicians (Jimmy Barnes and Peter Garrett) and the politicians (Garret, Sir Edmund Barton and John Fahey); the writers (Ita Buttrose and Bryce Courtenay) and of course the sportsmen; cricket’s greatest ever player Sir Donald Bradman and Parramatta Eels’ royalty Nathan Hindmarsh.
Now you can add another name to the list, the most recent of arrivals; former Reds, Brumbies, Western Force and Australian Rugby Sevens inside back Gene Fairbanks, recently returned from Japan. So how did Fairbanks go from living in Osaka, a prefecture with a population of nearly 10,000,000, to Bowral?
“My wife Jemima’s family are from Bowral and whenever we used to get holidays while we’ve been living in Japan, this is where we’d shoot back to,” Fairbanks tells RUPA. “I finished up playing in Japan a little while ago and we headed back here to a little investment property we had, not really sure what the next move was.
“I started going down to the Bowral Rugby Club and doing a bit of coaching and was lucky enough that some of the guys at the Club put me in contact with Matthew Anstee, who is the Principal of Raine & Horne Southern Highlands. We spent some time together and I explained that I had completed a Business, Marketing & Management degree at Monash University while I was playing; we both thought it was a great opportunity to work together and now I’ve been at Raine and Horne since September.”
The decision to pursue study opportunities whilst playing Rugby certainly proved an educated one for Fairbanks.
“I worked really hard to finish my study while I was in Canberra, with great support from both RUPA and the Brumbies, and I managed to do that part-time over my five years there which was great. Knuckling down and getting it done has proven invaluable; at the time you mightn’t think you’ll use it in the future, but as you reach the end of your career and start to look for opportunities away from Rugby people do sit up and listen a little bit more when you mention that you’ve finished your degree.”
Fairbanks’ Rugby story has taken him to three different Australian Super Rugby teams and two in Japan, as well as representing his country at Under 21 level and in Rugby Sevens, and playing for Australia A in the Pacific Nations Cup. Although he didn’t represent the Wallabies, Gene was involved in lots of training camps over the years as well; not bad for a ‘kid from the bush’ (Goondiwindi) who boarded at Downlands College in Toowoomba.
“Growing up in Queensland I always wanted to play for the Reds and I was lucky enough to do that in 2003,” he explains. “I learnt a lot while I was there, but then the Brumbies came calling and it was a great move for me to head to Canberra and be part of the squad that was there at that time.
“The senior guys included Owen Finegan, George Gregan, Stephen Larkham, Jeremy Paul and many more; they were guys who brought the best out of me as a footballer, and I really grew in Canberra and enjoyed playing my footy in a great city and being part of a great Brumbies family. I loved all of my five years there, and nothing could really top that.
“I then had my first stint in Japan with Honda, before I came home and signed for the Western Force for two seasons in 2011,” he continues. “It was a completely different experience for me and again I was playing with a great group of guys, however unfortunately we didn’t have too much success over there.
“I’d arrived back from Japan and all of a sudden I turned into one of the ‘old bulls’ in the squad which made it a different experience, but I loved Western Australia and I’d love to see the Club and importantly their supporters have some success soon.”
That stint in Nagoya with Honda had wet Fairbanks’ Far East appetite, and after he finished up at the Force it was an easy decision to head back to Japan, this time with somebody in tow.
“It was a bit of a different experience the first time around as I was a single guy by myself and Nagoya’s a bit more or a regional place, but when I signed with Kintetstu Liners I went over with my wife who was pregnant at the time,” he says. “It was an awesome experience, and we were fortunate that we began raising our little boy Digby over there for the first two years of his life.
“We both thought Osaka was really cool; we loved the food and we had a good group of friends at the Club including (former RUPA Board Member) Tom Hockings, who I’d played with at the Western Force, Wallaby Radike Samo and All Black Rico Gear. We also had a lovely bunch of Japanese players in the team too; it’s pretty cool to be thrown into new surroundings with an immediate group of 30 mates who are all keen to show off the best things about their country!”
In the end Fairbanks, who played alongside current Wallabies such as Kurtley Beale, Dean Mumm and Tatafu Polota-Nau in that Australia A side in 2007’s Pacific Nations Cup, and his family began to miss home and that brings us to the end of his professional Rugby career and to Bowral.
Having made his living in Rugby for twelve years and now successfully transitioned into life after it, Fairbanks is well-positioned to provide some sage advice for this currently playing professionally.
When I ask him what advice he would pass down, he explains that he “would simply tell players to get out and do as much as they can in their time off, whether they think they’ll use it or not.
“I never thought I’d be a real estate agent but in hindsight I could have done my license while I was playing, and it’s something I could have easily had in my back pocket for when I retired,” he said. “Choosing a profession is such a tricky decision to make when you do finish, but if you keep ticking things off and getting certificates along the way you’ll actually work out pretty quickly what it is that you don’t want to do as well.
“Then when you do finish you can be ready to know what you do want to pursue, so that’s the approach I’d recommend.”
Follow Gene on Twitter here or click here to connect with him on LinkedIn.
