CELEBRITY SWINGER: Dan Stains
FOR A rugby league prop whose objective in life was as soon as to be the toughest hitting defender within the competitors, Dan Stains may be very a lot a non secular man and a deep thinker.
The son of a battling dairy farmer in East Cooyar, close to Toowoomba, Stains overcame obstacles to vogue a exceptional profession in rugby league, captaining Cronulla, enjoying State of Origin for the Maroons, and representing Australia at worldwide stage.
However by all of it, and into his post-football profession, Stains has been conducting an ongoing seek for inside peace, self-belief and a real goal in life.
Now, after a training profession that by no means actually received off the bottom and two failed marriages, he says he’s discovered it – a happiness based mostly on loving all of life, particularly himself, and being within the current, appreciating the time he has proper now.
And he says golf has performed a key function in discovering the inside peace he had sought for thus a few years.
Dan Stains was a standout performer for the Cronulla Sharks, enjoying 135 video games within the high grade.
“Golf has given me a goal,” he mentioned after a Sunday morning spherical at Maroochy River, on Queensland’s Sunshine Coast, the place Stains has lived for many of the previous twenty years.
He took up the sport solely 5 years in the past and now, having simply turned 61, performs off a handicap of 14.
“I really like enjoying with mates, attempting to get higher, and it provides me one thing to do,” he mentioned. “I had just a few classes, watched YouTube movies and picked up ideas as I went alongside.
“At my age the underside line is that I’m not going to get significantly better. I simply love my Wednesday spherical, having enjoyable, and competing for a couple of dollars. It brings you into the current second.”
Stains has at all times been cautious of what would comply with every step of his superb life; what would he do after his enjoying days; after his teaching profession; after his marriages broke up? He even wrote a guide about it.
‘What Now’ is written for folks going by occasions of change, displays on Stains’ seek for probably the most highly effective transformational power obtainable, and chronicles a soccer profession that started with barefoot matches on a area filled with holes at Stains’ tiny native Darling Downs major college.
His dad died when he was simply 4. After battling to make it worthwhile, his mom bought the farm and moved the household to Toowoomba, the place she resumed her profession as a instructor. Additional tragedy adopted when Stains’ sister Madeline died in a street accident.
By means of all of it, he discovered consolation in rugby league. He made the Toowoomba and Queensland Underneath 12 groups, was chosen for the Queensland Underneath 18 facet, and represented Valleys within the Toowoomba A grade competitors from the age of 18.
Stains then moved to Brothers within the Brisbane competitors, lured by the very fact Ross Strudwick was the coach.
From his teenage years Stains had at all times yearned to teach. His ambition was to study from the very best coaches he may discover, then take all of that information again to Toowoomba, the place he would coach the Valley Roosters.
The very best coach of the time was Jack Gibson, and when the chance got here to hitch Gibson’s squad at Cronulla, Stains snapped it up. “I’d crawl over damaged glass to come back and play for you,” he advised Gibson when the cellphone name got here.
All the time a Maroon. Dan Stains along with his Queensland Origin-inspired golf buggy.
Stains went on to play 135 video games over seven seasons for the Sharks, normally as a front-row ahead, second-rower or hooker. He captained each Cronulla and the Balmain Tigers, the place he performed 35 video games in 1995-96, and had a yr with Halifax within the 1989-90 UK season.
Stains was chosen for the primary of his 4 Origin video games in 1989 and was a part of the Kangaroos tour of New Zealand that very same yr.
After his enjoying days have been over, he coached the Balmain Reserves group for 2 seasons earlier than being appointed coach of the London Broncos in Britain’s Tremendous League.
After starting with 10 straights wins, Stains’ Broncos went right into a steep decline, misplaced the Problem Cup last, carried out dismally the next season, and Stains paid the value by being sacked.
He returned to Australia, settled on the Sunshine Coast and acquired a mechanical restore enterprise, an occupation he thought appropriate for a former apprentice fitter and turner. The corporate did very nicely.
A decade later he bought the enterprise, jetted to Europe along with his second spouse Jen, trekked the 800km El Camino de Santiago pilgrimage by France and Spain, then detoured to China, the place he was a bodily training instructor in Shanghai, and coach to China’s fledgling girls’s rugby union group.
He returned to the Sunshine Coast and opened a bodily health centre the place one among his shoppers, Ross Forbes, talked him into taking on golf.
Stains now performs two or 3 times per week, navigating his maroon golf buggy bearing his signature ‘FOG 59’ livery – signifying his membership of the Former Origin Greats brotherhood – round Maroochy River’s community of concrete paths.
That leaves him ample time to pursue his newest challenge – writing a second guide, this one titled ‘Getting Excessive’. He says writing is simply as a lot a ardour for him now as rugby league was up to now.
