On the day when Facebook pulled the plug on media sites such as the Blayney Chronicle posting on their site, Brad Fittler took time out from running rings around the future stars of rugby league, to take aim at his pet hates, mobile phones and social media.
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"The negative effect of mobile phones, it's a major problem that really needs to be addressed,' he said.
"They're turning our kids into zombies and nobody is doing anything about it. I really want to go to the schools and just smash them in the eyes about it."
Fittler was in Blayney for a footy clinic as part of the NSWRL Foundation Hogs tour to not only engage more young people in the game, but also with Gus Worland from Gotcha 4 Life, help build resilience in young people.
They both believe that the effect of what a mobile phone can do to the brain is worse than nicotine, alcohol or other drugs.
"Smoking, drugs, alcohol they're all bad in what they do, but it's the mental ones like phones that are the most severe, there are alcoholics that can go on to live into their seventies or eighties," he said.
"Yet here we are putting phones into the hands of kids that just don't know anything and I can't understand why bigger steps aren't being taken
"The science is out there showing just how bad they are and I can't understand why any primary school student would need a phone. It's insanity."
As for the decline in kids playing all kinds of sports, not just rugby league, Fittler takes that right back to the parents.
"It's our generation that has to take responsibility for that," he said. "I know that parents are busy, but the long term advantages of your children playing in a sport far outweigh the minor inconveniences."
"There have been times in my life when I could have taken a different path, but the team sports got me somewhere every week."
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When it comes to his top tips for junior sport, they're all straightforward.
"Firstly, join a team," he said. "Find a game that you love and just have fun, don't take it too seriously."
The inevitable knocks, bruises and losses he said are all part of building resilience he said.
"Kids like this,' he said, sweeping his hand across the swarms of young players, "They're built with resilience and you hope that at this age, before they get older and pride kicks in, they've still got that."
Throughout his short training sessions with the kids Fittler had one constant message, breathe, breathe, breathe.
"The first thing we do when we're born is take a big breath, and yet now it's the last thing we think about.
"So now we do a process where we do some five second breathing and how to do it better through your belly, not your chest.
"Just some little tips to try to trigger them to engage with it a couple of minutes a day so next time that they're under pressure, they can revert to breathing rather than panicking."
Using our phones to fill our quiet moments with mindless unnecessary information goes against what is good for us he said in a rather musical way.
"It's the space between the notes that makes great music," he said.
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Mark Logan
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
Started working in newspapers in the 1990's in the darkroom of the Pastoral Times in Deniliquin before moving to Millthorpe in 2003. Soon after arriving I started as a photographer at the CWD. Now a journalist at the Blayney Chronicle.
