He's been called a 'grub' elsewhere in this newspaper - but this Shark has another side only a few see, writes Andrew Webster.

"Paul Gallen should have his day in court. Then he should have his day in jail." Herald columnist Paul Sheehan, April 7, 2008

Last month, Paul Gallen walked across a nondescript suburban ground in the Sutherland Shire and addressed the Holy Family Aquinas Colts under-8s side. It was the first weekend of a three-match ban after he admitted raking his hand across a cut - and its 10 stitches - above the eye of Titan Anthony Laffranchi in round three.

"I had to walk out there, around all the parents, after I'd just been on the news for raking some bloke's face," Gallen recalls. "Talking to a bunch of under-8s kids - I honestly didn't stop smiling the whole time I was there."

You probably think the 26-year-old Gallen, the Sharks back-rower with the painted-on snarl from the first to the 80th minute, is an angry young man. "A grub," as Sheehan called him after the Laffranchi incident.

What you might not know is how three years ago he met a five-year-old leukaemia sufferer, Bailey. How he remains in touch. Drops around at his house uninvited. Plays PlayStation with him. Stands on the sidelines for his first game back since the disease went into remission. Drags him to the Sharks' game against Wests Tigers two weeks ago. Wishes he wasn't in the sheds copping orders from Ricky Stuart while Bailey plays on the field at half-time for the Holy Family Aquinas Colts under-8s …

"He hit a soft spot in me," admits Gallen, the man who rips into every game so hard you think he will tear it in half. "I don't talk too much about the cancer with him. I just like seeing him."

Bailey's mum, Melissa, says of their relationship: "My son is inspired by him. Paul saw him at his worst, then his best. I think they have been good for each other."

Where did we get it wrong with Paul Gallen?

"Mate, it doesn't worry me," he says of his tainted image. "We've got a marketing lady at the Sharks who's only just started. She had the same impression of me as everyone else. She said, 'We need a different image of you out there. Whenever you do this charity stuff, let me know.' "

Gallen's response?

"I don't want to - because I don't have to."

Gallen plays a style of game that stirs the loins and primal instincts within every warm and cold-blooded man who watches this brutal game. He evokes memories of former glory days when no quarter was asked and none was given.

Ask Gallen what he was thinking the night he messed up Laffranchi's face - and it already looked like a road map, you might remember - and he replies, tongue in cheek: "Seeing blood on Laffranchi's face that night, I wanted to get more. I just have to stop that, you know?"

Then he informs you, in the foyer of the Australian team's Coogee hotel this week, that the pair just completed a weights session together.

"I know him off the field. I've been at weddings with him before and on the drink with him. I don't have any problem with him. On the field, he was filthy. I would've been filthy with him, too. He's a great player, and that was my idea of it all: to get him off the field."

Gallen pushed the envelope that night but many thought he went way beyond the acceptable. Sheehan called for incarceration.

"I was pretty filthy," Gallen says of Sheehan's remarks. "As far as I know, he's a good writer. He's written a few books. And he's probably a smart man. I'll probably never meet him. I'm not going to sue him for defamation. It's a waste of time, but what can you do? It will just be my name dragged through the mud. Again."

Mud can stick, but it's the family he worries about. His fiancee, Anne, laughs it off. One brother, Steve, who, following in Gallen's footsteps, is a plumber, cops it on the job site, as you would expect.

"Personally, I don't care," Gallen says. "But I feel for my family and my brothers. I know they cop a little bit at work. And my mum, who is a schoolteacher, cops a little bit. It's not nice when people write what they think of you, but it goes with the territory. It doesn't worry me - but it does worry me when it affects my family."

That said, his family knows the good inside. They know of the jumpers he organises for disabled kids. How he's helping to sort out a benefit night for a child with cerebral palsy - something even the Sharks won't know about until they read this.

Gallen is that knot of angry intensity who rips into every game so hard you think he could tear it in half. Then he thinks of the Holy Family Aquinas Colts under-8s and it reminds the angriest man in rugby league what it's all about.

"Just how fun footy is meant to be," he says.