Source :- THE AGE NEWS
Midway through the 2017 season Jason Taumalolo walked up to the North Queensland medical staff and asked for some painkillers.
“My quad is a bit sore,” Taumalolo said.
“We didn’t notice anything in the game. How long has it been sore?” came the reply.
“About three weeks,” he said.
When the Cowboys flew back to Townsville the next morning, Taumalolo was sent for scans, which revealed he had suffered a grade-three muscle tear in his quad.
Such an injury should have meant up to six weeks on the sidelines to recover.
But Taumalolo backed up the next week, and played for the rest of the year, including an unlikely grand final appearance against Melbourne – because the Cowboys needed him, especially with Matt Scott out of action with a ruptured ACL, and Johnathan Thurston limited to just seven games that year with an injured shoulder.
If that’s not enough to demonstrate Taumalolo’s toughness, what about last year and the week leading into the final game of the Cowboys’ season?
Jordan McLean was finishing up in the NRL, and Taumalolo was determined to play with his mate one last time, regardless of how much pain he was in.
Taumalolo hobbled off Leichhardt Oval the previous week, and his knee was “the size of a basketball”, according to long-serving Cowboys physio Steve Sartori.
What happened in the days that followed should go down in rugby league folklore. This story of bravery has never been told.
It will also give fans a greater appreciation of how difficult it has been for Taumalolo to reach 300 NRL games, which he will achieve and celebrate on Saturday night against the Panthers.
Sartori tells the story best.
“We had just finished the game against the Tigers and Jase walked in and couldn’t straighten his leg,” Sartori recalled.
“He’s always had problems with his knees, but a piece of cartilage about the size of a 20 cent piece had fallen off the end of his femur – a part of the anterior cartilage had broken away and was causing his knee to lock.
“Because it was Jordan’s last game, Jase said there was no way he was going to miss it. He was off his feet the whole week, didn’t do the captain’s run, and didn’t even warm up with the team on the night, which is not uncommon, but he kept telling us he would be OK.
“Even during the game, if you go back and watch, there is a moment you will see him standing there, banging his knee and trying to manipulate it back into place. Then he races back and joins the defensive line.
“I asked him afterwards what the pain was like.
“He said, ‘You know when you are in so much pain that you start to see stars, and you feel like you’re going to black out?’
“I said, ‘No, I don’t know that feeling’.
“He said, ‘Well, that’s exactly what it is like’.
“There’s no way I thought he would make 300 games, but he has. It’s incredible.”
When you ask Taumalolo about his pain threshold, he laughs and asks if Sartori spoke about the day, in 2014, when he played against Canberra and there was blood around his ankle.
“It felt like it was going to fall off,” Taumalolo said. “I should have missed game time along the way. That’s been my problem. Maybe I’ve got half a screw loose.
“I definitely feel old hearing 300. I’ve really enjoyed the journey. It’s been hard – some seasons have felt like they have really dragged on – but it’s also been a lot of fun.”
For all his injuries, the only time Taumalolo has used painkilling injections was for a bruised sternum a few years ago.
Taumalolo also helped revolutionised the international game when he and Andrew Fifita committed to Tonga ahead of the 2017 Rugby League World Cup, which later inspired other genuine NRL stars to align themselves with Pacific nations, rather than traditional powerhouses Australia and New Zealand.
The ability to play with injury, however, will never be forgotten by those close to him in Townsville. Coach Todd Payten rates him up there with the toughest he has played with. And he knows a thing or two about tough men, considering he played with Ruben Wiki, Adrian Morley and Gareth Ellis.
At 33, Taumalolo will finish his career as a one-club player, but he had plenty of opportunities to try his luck in Sydney.
He met with Parramatta when his older brother, Warner, was playing in the Eels’ under-20s side, and Stephen Kearney was coach.
“I also didn’t mind the Sharks,” Taumalolo said. “I’d never been to the Shire, but after having lunch with ‘Flanno’ [former coach Shane Flanagan], that was very enticing.
“But I adapted to the small-town life in Townsville – it was a simple life, and a life I enjoyed.”
Taumalolo still has another year remaining on his 10-year, $9 million mega deal, and told this masthead in Las Vegas at the start of the year how he would rather burn out than be held back for the sake of making it to the end of his contract.
“I’d much rather go out there and go all out until I can’t give no more,” he said in February. “I’ve lived by the sword these last 14 or 15 years of my career, and I’ll happily die by it.”
When reminded of that conversation, Taumalolo said: “If my body is willing to let me play on, I will. At the moment, it is. Touch wood, I’ll make it through next year.”
