Fall from grace ... Barba's demise serves as a reminder of the pressures on NRL stars. Source: News Limited
Sometime before Christmas he was at the beach, enjoying his first off-season as the Dally M Medal winner. It turns out we didn't know how much he was enjoying it, and so nobody could see how hollow he was inside.
He was being interviewed for a start on NRL Profiles on Fox Sports and, with that slight stutter of his, which we all took for country shy, Ben Barba talked about football, and the pressures involved, and the way he got himself right each day.
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It is disturbing how differently we now hear his answer, knowing what we now do. Through the filter of an alcohol and gambling problem and an ongoing stint in rehab, Barba's fall from the NRL's greatest fairytale is complete.
It was a no-brainer that his hospitalisation has forced the NRL Profiles piece to be scrapped, although clips will now be shown on Fox Sports tonight, on NRL 360.
"If I can wake up happy and be happy then," he says at one point, "then I know I'm probably going to be pretty relaxed all day.
"So I guess it starts really from the morning for myself, and getting up and not being too stressful. And then it just plays out during the day and I take it into the game. It's helped me out so much this year, getting my head right."
The way he played, the way the smile came so easily, we all thought Ben Barba didn't have a care in his world.
He was the fairytale. The Little Train That Could.
A country kid from far North Queensland, everybody considered too small. But he was lightning quick.
He got homesick. So his girlfriend came down and soon they had two young daughters to set up family.
He was given up on, considered unteachable under the high ball. But new coach Des Hasler believed, and Barba rewarded him with one of the great seasons anybody ever put together.
It took not even three months later for it to end in tears. By then Barba had left his partner, taken up with a new girlfriend and got himself fully accredited, by way of a stomach tattoo, with some blow-hards calling themselves the Epic Bender Crew, as if they had invented the big night out.
Barba is every chance to miss this entire season, not so much for the gambling and drinking but for what chief executive Todd Greenberg said was behaviour anybody would look "dimly" upon.
Barba's fall highlights the pressure on NRL players, and whether the duty of care could be more thoughtfully addressed at clubs.
The same week he went into rehab a young man tore his pectoral muscle in a training accident and went home and killed himself.
Mosese Fotuaika was 21. His girlfriend was newly pregnant and injury looked like it was about to rule him out for the season. Fotuaika knew the contract option was in the Tigers' favour and it caused him considerable stress knowing he was now likely going to miss that chance and he came up with a solution that was as wrong as it was permanent.
Monday
Monday Night Football LIVE 6.30pm (EDT)
Monday Night with Matty Johns LIVE 9pm (EDT)
Tuesday
The Back Page LIVE 7.30pm (EDT)
Wednesday
NRL 360 LIVE 7.30pm (EDT)
Thursday
Sterlo 6.30pm (EDT)
Friday
Late Night League (Delayed Friday night football) 10pm (EDT)
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Super Saturday from 1pm (EDT)
Up to 3 LIVE NRL matches
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Given Barba put so much emphasis on "getting his head right" why was he allowed to stray to such a point that he got lost among this lot?
Ask anybody, waking up "happy" through the haze of a six-bell hangover is hard to do. Barba had clearly lost his way. And so players need help.
Digital media now makes the news cycle breathe 24/7. Social media means everybody can publish, and usually does.
There is no longer an off-season. The intensity never fades. Players have no right to complain because these are all the reasons behind their new television deal almost doubling from $580 million to $1 billion.
To protect them, the instinct of clubs is to circle the wagons.
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And it might well be the worst choice they can make.
Through what they believe is necessity, it makes club life their entire life, without realising that protecting players from the real world leaves them acutely vulnerable to real world pressures - because they have no real world perspective.
What man with two young daughters has the time to go on epic benders each weekend, excusing it as enjoying much needed time off?
Indeed, what man with two young daughters has time for anything outside of the kids and work? Not a responsible one. Circling the wagons worked when clubs were only part of the player's life, because he had work and, more often than now, a family to tend to.
It created perspective, and that's what's lost today.
See Paul Kent with Ben Ikin on the premiere of NRL 360, 7.30pm (EDT) on Wednesday night on Fox Sports 1 and 1HD.
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