A split lip triggered Steph Hancock’s first comeback. Now she’s 42 and still can’t retire
Steph Hancock was lying on a table in the bowels of Suncorp Stadium, able to shove her thumb through her top lip, the first time she realised she’d made a terrible mistake.
“I had whacked someone’s knee or hip and my teeth went straight through my lip,” she recalls.
42 and still kicking: Dragons NRLW signing Steph Hancock.
“I could shove my thumb through it, don’t worry, it was gross.
“But I was getting stitched up and I’m there thinking, ‘What have I just done? I can’t retire.’ ”
That was in 2017, after she had led the Jillaroos to World Cup victory and announced she was retiring alongside great mate Renae Kunst on her home turf.
Now at 42, senior constable Steph Hancock is the Dragons’ newest NRLW signing, having retired and un-retired at least half a dozen times.
In 2021, when Hancock last stepped away from the game she’s played for half her life, she was miserable and found her way back within months.
“I say I’m retiring every year, I cop the whole ‘more comebacks than Johnny Farnham blah blah blah’ but I just love this game more than anything and it’s just so hard to give it away,” Hancock says.
“The footy’s not even the exciting part for me. I love the off-field stuff. I think that’s why I haven’t been able to give it away.
“Some of my best mates are my teammates from the very start. Anything in a team environment, it’s always stuck with me.”
The very start for Hancock, daughter of 11-time Queensland and Kangaroos prop Rohan, came in 2003 when she was handed a Jillaroos debut at the World Cup in Auckland.
Players had to pay $5000 each to cover costs of that tour. Now more than two million viewers are tuning in to women’s State of Origin matches, with television audiences and attendance records being either set or threatened every time they play.
For the first time in her career, Hancock, one of the best front-rowers the women’s game has seen, will not be juggling full-time work and those 6am finishes from night shift with NRLW commitments at the Broncos (2018-19), Dragons (2020) and Titans (2021-23).
No more leaving training early to clock on for 10pm police work, or flying up and down south Queensland highways to make fitness sessions on time.
Hancock has arrived in Wollongong with nothing but a pre-season to focus on, and plenty still to give after impressing off the bench during the Gold Coast’s run to last year’s grand final.
A telling conversation with Dragons coach Jamie Soward has brought her south again, a conversation that started with, “Do you think I can still play?”
“The Titans didn’t want me to go back in a playing capacity so that made me doubt myself,” Hancock says.
“But I had unfinished business after that grand final. During the season I was going back on for the last five to 10 minutes but I didn’t get the chance in the final.
“I did question Sowie. ‘Is he just being nice because I’ve been around a long time?’ But he had a pretty serious conversation with me and I’m definitely not here to babysit.
“I honestly thought that (the 2023 grand final) was my last game of footy. Win, lose, draw that was in my head. But my heart and my head just don’t ever agree. Most likely they will at the end of this season.
“But take that with a grain of salt too, I guess.”