AT plenty of points, sitting on the brink of a Testimonial year at his hometown club seemed a long shot for Joe Philbin.
Whether it was not even picking up a rugby ball until the age of 15 or being convinced his days at the club were numbered under Tony Smith, he certainly hasn’t taken the conventional route to this point.
Now, though, this year has been dedicated to the forward’s decade of service to Warrington Wolves and Saturday’s friendly against Leigh Leopards will be all about him.
Walking through a guard of honour with son Bobby in his arms at a hopefully busy Halliwell Jones Stadium will no doubt be a moment to savour – even if he isn’t one to relish being centre of attention.
“I’m not a fan of it – it’s probably not my personality type to be honest but I am proud of it,” he said.
“To do 10 years at any club is something to be proud of but to do it at the club that you love, you should celebrate it and I will.
“I do like to stay out of the spotlight as much as I can, but I’m really proud of the achievement.
“It hasn’t been too hectic, to be honest. I’ve got a great committee who are keeping a lot of the headaches away from me.
“I’m excited for it all, but I’m excited just to play again.
“This is the longest pre-season I’ve done for six or seven years. We’re at that back-end stage of pre-season now where everyone is just ready to play a game.”
There were always dreams of a career in sport for the young Philbin when he was growing up in Culcheth as values of hard work were being drilled into him and his four brothers by his farmer dad Pat and mum Mary.
However, it was with the round ball where his talent initially lay until a setback set him on the path to rugby league stardom.
“I used to play football at Culcheth Athletic, but I got dropped down to the B team because I put a bit of weight on,” he explains.
“I used to be pretty decent and was playing to a decent level, but I got a bit chunky and the manager said I wasn’t being the box-to-box player he wanted, so I got dropped.
“From there, I thought I wanted to go and play rugby as I didn’t really want to play for the B team.
“I always loved watching the game but my Mum didn’t want me getting my teeth knocked out!
“She is pretty over-protective so she didn’t want me to go, so I had to go on my own.
“I cycled down there on my own and that was it – I only played three or four games and then I got picked up pretty quickly.”
So to Culcheth Eagles he went and very quickly, his potential to be somewhat of a wrecking ball was discovered.
While many talents of his age would have already been in academy systems, Philbin was somewhat of a late bloomer and as he entered the Wire academy, he realised just how much he had missed.
“I did feel a bit out of place when I got picked up – all the lads I was joining had been playing rugby for years,” he said.
“I remember my first training session for the scholarship team and they were putting moves on. I didn’t know what a move was!
“Where I was playing, you just took the ball and ran it in. I did feel out of place for a while but when I got to the academy days, I started to understand the game more and realised I had a bit of raw ability.”
Of course, many will remember Philbin first emerging as a second-row prospect, making his first-team debut against Hull KR in July 2014 – a game in which he got injured.
He returned a month later and played a further two games that year while 16 followed in 2015 including six starts – a sustained breakthrough was looking likely.
What followed, however, was a year in which he thought chances of establishing himself at the club he loved were ebbing away.
Underwhelmed by what he was seeing, then head coach Smith sent Philbin on loan to Rochdale Hornets and Bradford Bulls until a moment that changed everything.
“I always played back row, but it got to 2016 and the year wasn’t going too well for me,” he said.
“I played in a Challenge Cup game at Oldham in the back row, and I got hooked off pretty early.
“At half time, Tony Smith gave me one of the biggest sprays I think I’ve ever had. He was saying I wasn’t good enough to be in the other changing room, let alone ours.
“In the second half, he put me on at prop for 20 minutes – I’d never played in the middle before then, but I was really angry about what he’d said so I went out and did alright.
“I don’t think I’ve played back row since.
“That year was one of so many lessons for me as I thought I was going to get flicked by the club.
“I wasn’t doing the right things off the field that I needed to change.
“When I did change them, it made me realise what I had.
“Maybe I could have played back row if I’d changed earlier, but the middle is the best place for me.”
From then on, he was a player transformed – a stocky, bullocking prop forward who cannoned himself into contact without a hint of self-preservation.
Having established himself as one of the first names on the team sheet towards the end of the Smith era and once his replacement Steve Price had arrived, his reputation really started to soar.
2019 was arguably his high-water mark, scoring crucial tries in the semi-final and final as The Wire lifted the Challenge Cup – to date the only major trophy Philbin has lifted – before being picked for the revived Great Britain side that toured New Zealand and Papua New Guinea.
“I’ve been lucky enough to have plenty of good memories,” he said.
“My debut is up there – if you’d have told me years before that I’d get to play a game for Warrington Wolves, that would have been everything for me.
“I’d have been happy with that, but once that gets done you want to move on to the next thing.
“The Challenge Cup Final in 2019 was obviously very special and then getting Great Britain and England caps.”
Still, though, his big dream of lifting a Super League title with his hometown club eludes him and having built his way back from the ACL injury that cost him much of his 2022 and 2023 seasons, the 29-year-old is ready to put the hammer down again.
The next man tasked with spearheading the club’s bid to land the ever-elusive “Big One” is Sam Burgess – a modern-day icon as a player but untested at the highest level as a head coach.
Despite his relative lack of coaching experience, however, Philbin believes he has brought with him the missing piece of the Wire jigsaw.
“The one thing that can be questioned of us in recent years is our resilience,” he said.
“When things are going well for us, we’ve looked a really good team but when they haven’t, we’ve folded to an extent.
“The one thing Sam has brought is that resilience.
“There was no dipping his toe in the water in the first few weeks – he was very clear about how he wants us to work.
“We were running long, hard hills at Birchwood Park on day one and that really set the tone.
“That said, we are having fun and we’re enjoying it. At the end of the day, we’re a group of mates going out playing a game of rugby together.
“The more you can keep the pressure off and keep it as that viewpoint, the more the skills can come out.
“Obviously, I want to go and win a competition but I think there’s been enough talk over the past few years. Now it’s time for action.
“We don’t want to be a hype team – we want to let our rugby do the talking.”
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