Wayne Pearce

Wayne John Pearce OAM (born 29 March 1960 in Balmain, New South Wales) is an Australian former professional rugby league footballer and coach. An athletic lock for the Balmain Tigers, he was affectionately known as 'Junior'. Pearce represented New South Wales in the State of Origin series as well as the Australian national rugby league team.

Pearce was captain of the Balmain Tigers rugby league club from 1982 to 1990. A local junior from the Balmain Police Boys club, he made his debut in 1980 and was quickly marked as a future star.

Pearce's son, Mitchell, is a half-back previously for the Sydney Roosters and currently for the Newcastle Knights.

Captaincy[]

Pearce's captaincy proved critical in elevating Balmain from also-rans to a force of the 1980s, in concert with Steve Roach, Benny Elias and, later, Paul Sironen. Along with fullback Garry Jack, they drove Balmain to the semi-finals in 1983 and every year from 1985 to Pearce's retirement. Pearce won the Rothman's Medal for the best-and-fairest player in 1985.

In 1986 Pearce captained the New South Wales Blues to their first-ever State of Origin clean sweep, but in the following two years there was to be a rapid decline, with Queensland easily winning every match in 1988. After this, Pearce stood down from representative rugby league, despite pressure for him to return after Queensland won even more easily in 1989. In 1988 he was awarded the Medal of the Order of Australia "for service to rugby league". Pearce was also the inaugural winner of the for Community Service by a professional rugby league footballer.^{[citation needed]}

Pearce also made an appearance the 1988 Australian television movie The First Kangaroos, which depicted the 1908–09 Kangaroo tour of Great Britain.^[3]

Pearce captained the Balmain Tigers to two successive grand finals in 1988 and 1989, both of which they lost. In 1990, Pearce could not play a full match until the seventeenth round, but for the rest of the season he was at his best, seen clearly in the play-off for fifth with Newcastle, when he scored a crucial try from a bomb and carted the ball forward as fearlessly as ever. The following week, though, proved to be his last match as Balmain lost 0–16, sparking a major decline in the club's fortunes after Pearce's retirement.

Coaching career[]

Pearce took over as Balmain coach in 1994 from the departing Alan Jones as the club finished with the wooden spoon at season's end. Pearce coached Balmain for another five seasons before they merged with the Western Suburbs Magpies. In 2000, Pearce became the inaugural coach of the Wests Tigers but stepped down after one season. He later said, "It was perceived as a forced marriage. There were a lot of trust issues that I experienced. It drained me to the point where I walked away from it. I had another two years on my contract as a coach, but it drained me to the point where I needed to move on."^[4]

Pearce also coached New South Wales for three seasons and in 2000 led New South Wales to a clean sweep winning the series 3–0 with the Blues winning game 3 by a then-record margin of 40 points. The match was also remembered for Bryan Fletcher's infamous hand-grenade try celebration. In 2001, Pearce coached NSW in what would prove to be his last series. His last game in charge was the widely remembered victory by Queensland who defeated NSW 40–14 where Allan Langer who had been playing over in England was phoned by Maroons coach Wayne Bennett in an urgent SOS call to return to Australia for the match. The next day, Sydney newspaper The Daily Telegraph wrote the headline "Bloody Alf".^[5][6][7]

Accolades[]

In February 2008, Pearce was named in the list of Australia's 100 greatest players (1908–2007) which was commissioned by the NRL and ARL to celebrate the code's centenary year in Australia.^[8][9]

Post-retirement[]

After 10 years as a rugby league commentator for Fox Sports, Pearce was appointed as one of the eight inaugural commissioners of the Australian Rugby League Commission at its reconstitution in February 2012. A peak performance facilitator and executive coach, he continues to run his leadership and team performance consultancy Wayne Pearce Advantage.^[3] He also fronts the rock cover band Wayne Pearce and the Big Hitters.^[8] On Sunday 17 April 2016, before Wests Tigers versus Melbourne Storm in round 7 (26 years after his retirement), the Hill surrounding Leichhardt Oval was named the Wayne Pearce Hill after him by the Leichhardt Municipal Council and the Wests Tigers Club.

Project Apollo[]

On 23 March 2020, following the completion of round 2 of the NRL Telstra Premiership, the ARL Commission decided to postpone the competition in the face of a rapidly rising COVID-19 community infection rate. This had enormous, adverse financial implications for the NRL and its stakeholders. On 27 March, Commission Chairman appointed Wayne Pearce to select and lead a crisis management team to resume a successful 2020 competition ASAP. This complex mission was called Project Apollo. Despite many setbacks, including Channel Nine threatening to cancel their broadcast deal and the referees initiating steps towards strike action, the NRL competition became one of the first professional sports codes in the world to restart the competition on 28 May. A revised 20-round competition concluded with the Grand Final being played on Sunday, 25 October. For the first time in history, the State of Origin series was played after the Grand Final, with the NRL season concluding at the completion of Origin 3 on 18 November.

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Sporting positions
Preceded by Joint Venture	Coach Wests Tigers 2000	Succeeded by Terry Lamb 2001–2002
Preceded by Alan Jones 1991–1993	Coach Balmain Tigers 1994–1999	Succeeded by Joint Venture
Preceded by Tommy Raudonikis 1997–1998	Coach New South Wales State of Origin 1999–2001	Succeeded by Phil Gould 2002–2004