Since he returned from Sydney a few years ago, Henry Leslie has wanted to do two things - win a Central North premiership with Walcha and pull on the NSW Country amber and black.
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So naturally he was pretty excited when he learnt he had made the Cockatoos training squad.
"I'm pretty stoked, I've been trying to crack it for the last few years," the Walcha prop said in between congratulations from team-mates and Rams supporters, following their clash with Pirates on Saturday.
The squad was formerly announced a couple of hours before the game, but Leslie had known for a few days.
"I had a missed call on Tuesday night about 10.30, then I got a text saying 'it's the Country coach can you call me back'," he said.
"Then he called me the next morning when I was loading timber in my ute .... so I raced out and called him back and got the good news."
He will now head down to Sydney on July 15 for a training camp, following which the squad will be trimmed to the side to travel to Brisbane in late September for the Australian Rugby Shield.
A cornerstone of the Central North pack their past four NSW Country Championship campaigns, Leslie impressed as a big part of the Kookaburras' scrum dominance during the recent tournament.
Paying credit to his team-mates, he has also this year, he said, been working a lot harder on his game, particularly his set piece play.
This season is the 29-year-old's fifth with the Rams after linking up with them when he moved back from Sydney in 2019.
He had originally gone down there to attend Scots College, but ended up staying on post-school and playing seven seasons with Randwick, winning a colts and second grade premiership along the way.
"It was good playing with them, you got to mix with the likes of Stephen Hoiles and Jeff Sayle (former Wallabies flanker and Randwick legend). And Owen Finegan coached me for a bit," Leslie said.
One of the preeminent clubs in Sydney and a long-standing nursery of Super Rugby talent and Wallabies, he said one of the best parts was when the Super Rugby players came back after the season finished to play club rugby, and mentioned Waratahs and Wallabies back-rower Ned Hanigan as one of those that he learnt a lot off.
Also completing a carpentry apprenticeship while he was down there, these days Leslie runs his own carpentry business.
"It was all good fun, but it's good to be home now and playing country footy," he said.
Originally from Gulargumbone, his family runs a farm at Bendemeer. It is equidistant to Tamworth or Walcha, but as far as Leslie was concerned there was never really any question where he was going to play.
"I've got a few good mates that I went to school with from Walcha," he said, adding jokingly "so I couldn't go down the hill (Tamworth)".
Part of the side that was beaten by Pirates in the 2019 Central North grand final, he loves the Rams.
"We've had a tough last few years but hopefully we can rebuild and get back to where we were four or five years ago," he said.
"But every little town goes through it's stages. We're just having a bit of a tough run at the moment with injuries and numbers."
They are though at the half way point of this season still well in the finals mix sitting just a point outside the four.
