It only lasted less than 2 minutes but I’ll never forget the moment I finally met Brett Lee, a moment I had been waiting 5 years for.
I was at the Sydney Cricket Ground for day one (11th November 2004) of the New South Wales verses New Zealand tour match, I was lucky enough to be sitting in the members stand because of this elderly gentleman who was a member had offered to let my Mum and myself sit in the members stand with him and get into the match for free. I was finally watching Brett bowl, I’d never gotten to see him play and I finally was I didn’t take my eyes off him even when he was just fielding.
When the players came off for lunch I went down and sat along the NSW walkway and took some photos of the guys walking off. After they’d all walked past I went back to my seat and had some lunch before heading up stairs to see the view and went back down stairs about 15 minutes before the players came off for tea. I went and sat back down by the walkway when they came off for tea but just like before lunch I didn’t get a good photo of Brett so I waited around for the 20 minutes until they walked back out and I got a nice photo of him walking down from the dressing rooms.
I watched the rest of the match and had to convince my Mum that we didn’t have to go until I at least tried to meet Brett, I could see him in the dressing rooms and about to walk towards the back of the stand so I quickly walked around and as I got to the back of the stand he was there signing an autograph so I went up to him and said “can you please sign this” he did and all I could say was “thank you” and he walked away but turned around after someone called out to him, looked at me with complete eye contact and smiled at me. I knew I had been smiling ever since I walked up to him and I didn’t stop smiling for a while after that. I had so much I wanted to say to him, I wanted to say ‘happy birthday’ since it was his birthday just 3 days earlier but I couldn’t say anything, I was lucky just to say what I did since I was speechless.
I decided after meeting him to stay around and see if I could meet other Blues players, I ended up meeting 8 other players. Brett walked back past us about 15 or 20 minutes later, signed an autograph for a kid who was there and went back into the dressing rooms after that I only saw him in the distance doing interviews. I would have loved a photo with him but for now I am content with the memory and autograph.
This story is used with permission from Melissa. Please do not take anything here without the prior consent of the webmistress.