CHRIS Sandow’s mum Rhonda left Australian shores for the first time this week to experience her son’s date with glory in the Challenge Cup Final at Wembley.

When there have been difficult decisions to be made in his life so far, mum is the one Sandow has usually turned to for advice and her presence at the national stadium should prove both motivational and inspirational to a surefire pre-match contender for the Lance Todd Trophy.

“I’m really looking forward to having my mum here, being a mummy’s boy,” said Sandow.

“She’s never been out of Australia. I think she’s the only one in the family with a passport and she has been doing a bit of rubbing in to family back home.

“My mum was going to come over a few months ago but I think it’s perfect timing for her to come over now when it’s Wembley – something spectacular to look forward to.

“I’m just buzzing, I can’t wait to get out there and do the battle with the boys and hopefully get the win.”

Sandow said it was his mum who sat him down at the age of 18 to question what he wanted out of life when ‘bad behaviour’ cost him his first professional contract at Gold Coast Titans, and she advised him to stick with it when the scrum half was getting frustrated that strong performances in the South Sydney Rabbitohs under 20s side were not leading to his NRL debut.

They were wise words from the mum-of-nine, with his first of more than 150 first-grade games Down Under arriving a week later against New Zealand Warriors in Auckland.

“Mum always has the right things to say,” he said.

“When the Rabbitohs coach at the time, Jason Taylor, said I was going to play in the NRL that week I thought he was joking around and I didn’t believe him.

“I kept asking if he was lying and he said no. I gave him a big hug and when we’d finished in the sheds I rang my mum up.

“I said, ‘are you you sitting down or standing up?’. She said ‘sitting down’. I said ‘guess what?’ She said ‘What?’ I said ‘I’m playing NRL at the weekend.’ She just started crying.

“Mum worked really hard for all of us and we all know how much mum has done for us.”

His family are typical to the Cherbourg area in having a passion for rugby league.

He feels there were high hopes for him to succeed in the sport.

“I had rugby league in my blood from my mum and dad (Stephen),” he said.

“My dad and his brothers and my mum’s brothers were all really good at rugby league so I had a lot of expectations looking down on me growing up as a kid if I was going to fill those shoes.”

His brother Denis moved to Sydney in a bid to turn professional.

“He would have made it if he had stayed but he ended up going back home to the community,” said Sandow.

“It’s just that cycle that everyone lives in. It’s hard to move away from your family and stuff like that - it’s only the tough ones that survive.

“Family is always number one, but if you want to make a name for yourself you have to live life. You don’t want to have to regret nothing.

“There are some things I do regret because there’s been times like when family members have passed away and I couldn’t go to funerals.

“But they always knew how much rugby league meant to me. I do phone them and ask if I need to come home, and they always say ‘No, you’ve got rugby league to play, you put that first before anything else.’ “That’s the things I’ve got to live with after rugby league. But at the moment I’m on my journey and enjoying myself at Warrington Wolves.”