Penrith’s junior coaching staff still remember the first time they laid eyes on a teenaged James Fisher-Harris.
“You don’t forget,” Alex Chan, who coached Fisher-Harris in U18s, told AAP.
“He was fresh. There were a few who came across from New Zealand. But he was the epitome of the big dog.”
Rejected by the Warriors at age 16 after trialling against their development side, Fisher-Harris was recommended to Penrith by his future agent Daryl Mather.
At age 17, he arrived from north of Auckland for what was expected to be a short pre-season stint before returning home.
“He just flipped it on its head,” Chan, himself a former New Zealand Test front-rower, said.
“He became that beast we all see now. He was doing that stuff when he was 17. He was saying ‘give me the ball’, without yelling at anyone.
“There were some big bodies in that group we had and some seasoned players who had been playing in that comp for years.
“That kid came across from New Zealand and he was just banging and smashing everything.”
Fisher-Harris, for his part, has spoken openly about his disappointment of missing out on the Warriors and the way it shaped his life.
He will move to them next year with Sunday’s grand final against Melbourne his last game for Penrith, but has let the pain of being forced to move away from his family at a young age drive him throughout his career.
“Looking back now, it’s probably one of the biggest blessings I have gone through,” Fisher-Harris said.
“I just had to stand on my own two feet. Different country, no family. It’s made me a better player and better person.
“I was just so hungry back then, I would go anywhere. That’s how we were up there in the north in New Zealand. “
Chan wasn’t the only one to notice it.
Lee Hopkins, who has been involved in Penrith’s pathways since 2010, has only seen five teenagers he immediately knew would make it.
Nathan Cleary, Jarome Luai, Liam Martin, Isaiya Katoa and James Fisher-Harris.
“You could just see it in his eyes,” Hopkins said.
“I had to ask him to leave the gym so many times. I would be saying Fish, I want to go home. I am going to have to get you to leave,” Hopkins recalled.
“He was living in the middle of nowhere at that time in Penrith, and he felt better lifting in the gym.
“He never once complained, he was always polite. But with Fish it was purely just work ethic. You don’t work that hard without getting those rewards.”
Within two years of landing in Australia, Fisher-Harris was a regular in first grade and has since become one of the NRL’s best and most consistent props.
But by then he had already announced himself as a force at Penrith, with his maiden grand final for Penrith under Chan in SG Ball in 2014.
Footage of Fisher-Harris’s first hit up in the match has to be seen to be believed, before the front-rower broke his wrist midway through the match and played on.
“I think it was like four different bones in my hand or something like that,” Fisher-Harris said.
“But it was just part of the culture, even then.”
It’s a moment that stuck with Chan.
“He just didn’t care. Nothing fazed that boy. When he is on his focus is on,” Chan said.
“He had those values of: I don’t talk. I prove things, I don’t need to tell everyone what I am going to do.
“He came across with something to prove. He was a hungry dog, and you will never stop a big hungry dog from getting to something he wants to get to.”
