Liverpool to St Helens is 20 kilometres as the crow files, or a half-hour drive on the M62.
Yet in the way of the UK, people from these places have different accents, funny names for one another and different tastes in sport.
Liverpudlians like football of two types – red or blue. St Helens folk like “roogby” that we’d call rugby league.
James Graham was born in Maghull, Merseyside, which makes him a “Scouser”.
His mates from home will tell you his accent’s been Australian-ised, a bit. But to most Aussies he’s equal parts Ringo and George.
Graham came to rugby league because his old man, John, was a league fan. Didn’t have a team, John, just liked the game. Every year John and James’s grandad would head to the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley. Before boarding the bus in 1993 (Wigan and Widnes), John picked up some “refreshments” for the trip and saw an advertisement in a shop-front window: “St Helens Crusaders U/8s Seek Players”.
“We’ll see if our James fancies that,” John told his dad. A couple of days later he asked the boy: “What do you think about playing rugby?”
The young fellow was non-plussed at first. He’d never even heard of it. Sport for a Scouse kid was soccer in a park, jumpers for posts. But he told the old man he’d give it a try.
John bought him boots and a ball, and took him to the park, had a pass and a kick. Wednesday night they headed to training, where there was actually a game. James didn’t know the rules – thought it might be like American football. But the coach pitched him in.
And the boy loved it.
He made rep teams. He played on Wembley aged 11. By the time he was 16 he’d signed with St Helens.
According to a team-mate at Blackbrook Junior and Amateur Rugby League Club, Greg Peters, what you see now is what opponents saw then.
“He was always bigger, much bigger than other kids,” says Peters. “Faster, stronger. Parents were always saying, ‘Don’t worry, next year you’ll all be the same size, and catch him up.’
“But we never did. If anything, he got bigger again!”
Peters says Graham could always play. He wasn’t just big. “You didn’t know if he was going to run the ball, pass the ball, sidestep, run straight – he was always asking questions. He played against us before joining us, and we had some brave lads. But our best players, you didn’t know what he was going to do.
“And he’s never changed. What you see now is what he’s always been but on a smaller scale. Always did the full 80 minutes, always wore his heart on his sleeve.
“I remember a game that was particularly wet and horrible. First minute, the ball was loose on our try-line in a pile of sludge and mud. A couple of our lads were hanging off.
“Out of nowhere James came flying in, skidded over, sent mud and water flying everywhere and grabbed the ball. He was covered in mud and crap the whole game. Wasn’t bothered.”
Competitive, then?
“Very. Remember when he first got to Australia [in 2012] he put some Vaseline on his legs? Got warned off it? Well, he did the same as a kid. He used to carry around a little bottle of cooking oil, rub it all over him so we couldn’t tackle him. He was too slippery.”
Yet not all of Graham’s opponents could be so easily beaten.
“We were on a night out, between pubs, looking for taxis,” says Peters. “And we lost him. And we looked around – where is he?
“We saw him down the road, 50 yards away, and he’s trying to knock a wall down by running into it.
“We were like, ‘James, what are you doing?’ He was like, ‘I’m going to knock this wall down!’ He was doing his best."
What sort of wall? Cobblestone? Brick?
“It were the side of a building! He was taking a ten-yard run up, giving it everything.
“People used to say of James that he’d run at a brick wall. Well, that night he actually did.
“We were about 18,” adds Peters. “We hadn’t been drinking very long.”
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