The first “football" James Storer ever had was the bladder from a cask of moselle.

The former NRL player and Fijian international who is now turning around the fortunes of the Port Kembla Blacks footy team grew up in an Aboriginal mission in Mogo on the South Coast.

“I was pretty much surrounded with alcohol and violence down there,” Storer says.

“I don’t ever really remember my mum and dad being together, they were always separated. The reason I had to stay down there with mu mum is because my father was in prison.

“The drinking I saw there was proper drinking; it wasn’t on the weekend it was day to day. Sometimes you’d be stepping over bodies to go to school.”

Surprisingly, Storer sees that upbringing as “a massive blessing”.

“If I didn’t grow up in those conditions I could have ended up someone different,” he says.

“I would get letters from my father from prison but down there all I got was like ‘have a drink, have a drink’.”

But he didn’t have a drink, and he never has. What really saved that kid on surrounded by alcohol and violence in a mission on the Far South Coast was rugby league.

“I had a dream as a kid that I wanted to play footy on TV,” he says.

“At the time I thought they [rugby league players] weren’t role models but as I got older I realised they were the best role models I could ever have.

“Rugby league saved my life, no doubt about that at all.”

Storer left the mission – and his mother – when his father got out of prison. He and his siblings moved to Sydney before eventually settling in Thirroul with their father.

He didn’t forget about his mother – he would later help her give up alcohol.

And Storer would also get the chance to play rugby league on television. In 2000 he spent two seasons with the Dragons Jersey Flegg side before touring England with the Australian indigenous team.

In 2003 he joined South Sydney – partially because they told him he wouldn’t play first grade. Storer took that as a challenge and ended playing three top grade games.

Stints with Parramatta and Cronulla and the Fijian team in 2008 (his father is from Fiji) followed before a series of broken arms led him to retire.

Then the idea of playing for Fiji in 2013 World Cup entered his head. People said he had no chance – he was out of shape, he wasn’t playing in the NRL.

But it seems the wrong thing to say to Storer is “you can’t do it”. He did it – joining a local rugby league team and training the house down until he was picked in the Fijian side that would surprise everyone by finishing one game short of the final.

This month he played for the Fijian team again – as captain – in the Melanesian Cup match against Papua New Guinea.

Being a part of the Fijian team would change Storer’s life – during the training for the 2008 World Cup they went to Fiji and it was there that he found God.

“Every single morning at five o’clock we’d have church and that’s where we got introduced to God,” he says.

“We bought into it because the whole team was doing it. By the end of that World Cup all of us had changed.”

The team would form prayer circles at training and before games. Storer says it helped the team to come together.

“There were all different levels of experience [in the team] but religion brought everyone back to being human. We were one, we were no better than than anybody.”

It’s part of his approach in his latest footy role – captain-coach of the Port Kembla Blacks in the Group 7 competition.

The team he joined wasn’t in the best shape. Last season, they finished last with just two wins and on the wrong end of a lot of thumpings – the worst an astonishing 96-6 loss.

“You could see the team was really, really struggling but I wouldn’t have wanted it any other way,” he says.

“I wouldn’t want a team that had won heaps of premierships. The big drawcard for me was having all these different boys there, all these different nationalities, troubled kids. I thought ‘that’s me’ and it’s a privilege to coach a team like that.”

His first training session with the team was at Christmas and, less than six months later, the Blacks have beaten one of last year’s grand finalists and won three out of the five games played this year. And opponents racking up cricket scores are a thing of the past too.

Prayer is part of the reason for their success, according to Storer.

“It just brings us together - I might have played in a World Cup, this guy might have played for this or that team but when it comes to game day, we’re all one,” he says.

“The boys realised how it all works when we played our first game against Albion Park.

“The penalty count was 20-something against us to three. We got killed in the penalty count but as I kept reminding the boys, ‘this is meant to happen. We’re Port Kembla, we’re not meant to win the penalty count.’

“And so we stayed humble. Whereas last year, if they got those bad decisions, the boys would have lost their heads and given up, which is why other teams scored so many points against us.”

The Port Kembla locals are loving their new team – from having a handful of players last season, there are now 50 on the books and the Port Kembla Leagues Club is full after matches.

Storer is modest about some of this season’s wins, claiming “we just got lucky” because their opponents had key players out or ref's calls went their way.

Anyway, for him it’s not about winning the competition – “I’m here to change their lives”.

“The way I measure my success with these boys is, on game day, if they do something I taught them at training, that’s a win for me – instantly,” he says.

“If they learn one thing every time, then when I leave this club I know that these boys are going to be able to teach their little brothers.”