There were days, in his most glorious and furious times, when Jason Taumalolo felt inevitable.
He could not be truly stopped because how do you stop the king tide rising high? How do you fight a hurricane once it starts blowing? What can you do when a man who has never met a rugby league problem he couldn’t run over decides you are one of those problems?
You can’t do anything, as a generation of forwards found out. You can only endure what comes and try to rise again from the wreckage Taumalolo would leave behind during his days as the best forward in the world.
As he prepares to break Johnathan Thurston’s all-time Cowboys appearances record with his 295th game, the 32-year-old is not quite that strength, which in olden days moved earth and heaven.
Jason Taumalolo will break North Queensland’s all-time appearances record on Friday night. (Getty Images: Chris Hyde)
But how could he be? Taumalolo has spent the last 17 winters fighting giants and usually winning. There are several older players in the NRL, but only Ben Hunt debuted longer ago.
Many men he once counted as fiercest rivals are at home, with grey in their beards and grown-up children. In his fourth season of first grade, Taumalolo played against former New South Wales and Australian prop Tom Learoyd-Lahrs. Now, he calls Learoyd-Lahr’s son Kaiden a teammate at the Cowboys.
He who once was youngest — debuting at just 17 — is now among the elders and his origin story is now old enough to be shrouded in the mists of time. His beginning is the first of his legends, when he seemed like a chosen one, the Tongan prince who was promised.
Taumalolo’s first grade debut back in 2010 against Canterbury is so far in the past that the other side boasted a former Hunter Mariner, a Super League club that hadn’t existed in almost 30 years.
Jason Taumalolo debuted for North Queensland just a few months after turning 17. (Getty Images: Ian Hitchcock)
Taumalolo was just a few months past his 16th birthday, but on the advice of Under 20s coach Kristian Woolf and following a spate of injuries in the forwards, then Cowboys coach Neil Henry didn’t hesitate.
“He was a stand-out, even at that age, against boys four years older. He could handle himself and he’d done well in our opposed sessions,” Henry said.
“He was a bit shocked when we told him. But when I’d spoken to Kristian about it he was adamant Jase could handle it physically.”
Henry brought him along slowly in those early years. Even for a player as gifted as Taumalolo, there’s no such thing as a guarantee and even the greatest of talents can take some time to find their feet.
The Cowboys brought Taumalolo along slowly, a move that’s since paid off. (Getty Images: Ryan Pierse)
“With his footwork, he can take 10 or 15 metres off you every time, even then. The next challenge for him, and it was a challenge, was to be consistent defensively,” Henry said.
“He had to find effort on effort, which was hard because he put so much energy into his carries, then he has to flip.
“That was something he really worked on.”
Taumalolo’s coming of age as a footballer came in the 2013 finals series against Cronulla. Against a Sharks pack containing the likes of Andrew Fifita, Luke Lewis, Paul Gallen and Wade Graham, it was Taumalolo who turned the game late.
Still just 20, Taumalolo ran for 139 metres and broke 12 tackles in the second half alone, scoring a try and creating a chance for the game-winning score in the dying seconds.
It wasn’t converted and the Cowboys went down 20-18, but it was the first time Taumalolo reached the limits of his talents.
Taumalolo came of age in a 2013 semi-final loss to Cronulla. (Getty Images: Matt King)
For Henry, it was the match where Taumalolo proved to himself just what he was capable of.
“That was where he stood up and made a statement. He kicked on from there,” Henry said.
“It takes time to mature, but Jason had the physical maturity early — it was about whether he had the mental maturity to handle the NRL week to week and I think he realised around that semi-final, ‘I can do this.'”
The charge to greatness
Then came Taumalolo’s second legend, that of his ascension. The glory days that followed were as glorious as any forward has ever enjoyed in rugby league history.
After moving to lock near the end of the 2014 season under new coach Paul Green, Taumalolo rose with his team as the Cowboys chased their maiden premiership.
The sight of Taumalolo, James Tamou and Matt Scott lurking on the bench for their second stints felt like the beginning of the end of a nightmare.
Seeing them come on, one by one, was a warning that the monsters were coming and there was no waking up to escape them.
Taumalolo was a stand-out in North Queensland’s 2015 grand final victory. (Getty Images: Cameron Spencer)
They worked as a unit, and through them, Taumalolo learned how to find his best when it mattered most, both late in matches and late in seasons.
He ran for the equal most metres of any Cowboy in their 2015 grand final win over Brisbane and his 23 run, 264 metre effort in a victorious extra time rematch against the Broncos in the 2016 semi-finals is one of the best games a forward has played this century.
But he was as much an all-terrain vehicle as he was a grand prix racer. Taumalolo ran for the most metres of any player in the competition in 2016 and he did it again in 2017, nearly 800 metres ahead of the second-placed Gallen.
No forward has topped the metre count since.
He shared the Dally M medal in the former year alongside Cooper Cronk, making him the first running forward to win since 1989 and only one to do so in the NRL era. He defied belief and even to his teammates, sometimes he barely seemed human.
Taumalolo is the only running forward this century to win the Dally M Medal. (Getty Images: Ryan Pierse)
“There’s times he’d get injured and his body would heal so quickly. I’ve never seen anything like it. It wasn’t from being a professional, it was genetic,” said premiership five-eighth Michael Morgan.
“He’s always been built different. He’d tear his calf, the MRI would show the tear and a week later he’d be running around like nothing happened.”
Then came 2017, which remains Taumalolo’s masterpiece, his year of miracles and the season he transformed from a great player to a folk hero.
North Queensland were a different team by then. Thurston missed much of the year with a shoulder injury, Scott did his knee and Tamou had already left for Penrith.
The Cowboys limped into eighth, losing players along the way like a shambling zombie drops body parts, only for Taumalolo and Morgan to stitch them together and lead a dream walk all the way to the grand final.
In 2017, Taumalolo put the whole of North Queensland on his back. (Getty Images: Mark Kolbe)
Taumalolo’s numbers from that run are astonishing. First, it was 22 hit-ups, 259 metres, eight tackle busts and a try in the elimination final through the teeth of a vicious Cronulla pack, where he also took the carry before Morgan’s winning field goal in extra time.
Then it was 21 runs for 241 metres in the semi-final against Parramatta and finally 21 runs for 256 metres in the preliminary final against the Sydney Roosters, where two Taumalolo runs and quick play-the-balls directly preceded Cowboy tries.
The magic ran out on grand final day as North Queensland were smothered by a Melbourne side with a fair claim to being the best team in NRL history.
It’s fitting it took a team like that to take him down because by that point it felt like a winning machine that complete was only thing that could stop Taumalolo.
“He’d do it every week. There’s no forward who’s ever done it like that. Payne Haas and Tino Fa’asuamaleaui, the elite front rowers of today, they’re not doing that and I don’t think anyone ever will. In my opinion, he is the best forward who’s played,” Morgan said.
“The consistency, the Dally M win — no forward has done that except Jason. I don’t know if there’s one game that stands out because that 2015 to 2017 period was so special.”
The love for Taumalolo in the Tongan community is overwhelming. (Getty Images: Hannah Peters)
But there was still more to do because once Taumalolo switched his international allegiance to Tonga, defecting from New Zealand — who’d he’d already helped to a record three-straight wins over Australia in 2013-14 — he began a rugby league revolution that will ripple through history forever.
The Mate Ma’a had always been a part of him. He’d debuted for Tonga during the 2013 World Cup and when he was nine, parts of his parents’ wedding rings melted down and put on his teeth as a Tongan rite of passage.
His birth name is Vaai — Jason was chosen for him by a childhood teacher in Auckland who couldn’t pronounce it — which translates as “to see”, but even Taumalolo could not have foretold what his decision would mean.
Other players followed and all of Tonga came home with them. The tales are well told now, but no less powerful.
In fact, the stories of their World Cup run, where they beat New Zealand before controversially losing to England, before downing Great Britain and Australia in consecutive weeks two years later, grow in the telling.
What he means to Tonga is bigger than words on a page can ever convey. To that community he is more than a man in a way can only be felt and you have to see it to feel it. You have to be there when he stands in front of the red sea and they come together and raise their voices high for him and for one another.
Years later, when the football pride of Samoa started their own revolution, they all said Taumalolo’s example had inspired them. The choice he made, at the height of his powers when he could have the most impact, has transformed the sport.
It will always be Taumalolo’s greatest legacy, no matter how many runs or metres he makes. He remade the global face of his sport, redrawing the map and redefining what was possible.
The fall and rise
Years passed, and things changed. The Cowboys slipped from the competition’s elite as the premiership heroes departed one by one.
Today, Taumalolo is the last of them. Morgan himself, just a year older than Taumalolo, has been retired for more than five years now.
Rugby league came to demand more from its lock forwards, especially in the set restart era. They needed to be able to pass and being a battering ram, even if you were the finest battering ram God ever gave breath, wasn’t enough.
It was a slow process because evolution doesn’t happen overnight and even as the game he dominated demanded a new kind of greatness, the old ways still served Taumalolo well.
Jason Taumalolo has kept to the old ways as rugby league changed around him. (Getty Images: Ian Hitchcock)
In a 2020 showdown with Canterbury, he ran for 345 metres, which wasn’t just a career high but the highest total by a forward in a match in NRL history. That same season he averaged a career high 207 metres per game.
As recently as 2022, he was the best forward on a preliminary final team and his performance in that years epic golden point finals win against Cronulla was reminiscent of his best days — a 24-run effort that produced 270 metres, a try assist and the try that sent the game to extra time.
That assist is important because Taumalolo always had a little more skill than he was given credit for. The pass, a left-to- right beauty out to Peta Hiku, is his greatest act of creativity.
But as the game entered a different world and especially once it sacrificed itself on the altar of set restarts the demands of Taumalolo’s position shifted.
A few bullets weren’t enough; you had to be able to pass like a half. Compared to the likes of Isaah Yeo, his game just didn’t seem as sophisticated.
Injuries started to slow him down as well, in a way few opponents ever could. Taumalolo kept breaking his hands and his knees started bear the toll of the battles he’d fought as his combatants from the old days grew old and faded from view.
A new generation of forwards replaced them, led by the likes of Yeo and James Fisher-Harris, and Addin Fonua-Blake, a longtime Tongan teammate, but most of all by Payne Haas — in 2019, Haas became the first forward in four years to run for more metres in a season than Taumalolo.
Jason Taumalolo looked to be past his best after a couple of slower seasons. (Getty Images: Ian Hitchcock)
The 10-year contract Taumalolo signed back in 2017 made him a target for the salary cap fetishists and was cast as an millstone around the club’s neck that they could not escape.
Two years ago, his average run metres dropped to 113, his lowest return as a starter, as he averaged just 39 minutes per match. He was dropped to the bench, then switched to prop.
Last season, he managed just 10 games and while he looked alright when he was out there, things looked to have turned. Few forwards can speed up again in their 30s once they start to slow down.
Taumalolo’s career seemed to be on the way out, like a cowboy shot in the gut who staggers towards the saloon doors, only it was taking years to get there.
Injuries took their toll on Jason Taumalolo in his later years. (Getty Images: Ian Hitchcock)
It had to happen sometime because no king can reign forever. But they can return and, against all odds, Taumalolo has managed it.
Overcoming the ravages of time itself, in 2026, Taumalolo has roared back from the grey space in our minds where we send the broken-down heroes, and here we find his final legend, that of the fall and rise.
He is averaging more run metres per game than his Dally M year. Across the NRL, only New Zealand’s Jackson Ford has trucked the nut for more yards and Ford averages 74 minutes per game to Taumalolo’s 46.
Jason Taumalolo is back to his form of almost a decade ago. (Getty Images: Chris Hyde)
Right now, nine rounds into his 17th NRL season and several years after some believed him finished, Taumalolo is running for more metres per game than Haas, Fonua-Blake, Joseph Tapine, James Fisher-Harris, Naufahu Whyte and Terrell May.
He is playing all the hits with his footwork and his power, moving so like he used to, but there’s a little bit extra on top. Taumalolo is averaging his most offloads per game since 2022 and has more try assists than the previous three seasons combined.
Best of all, he again rumbles hungry like the beast when he returns to the field for his second stint. Against Brisbane a few weeks back, he had 11 runs for 118 metres in just 24 minutes to close the match like it was 2016 all over again.
Last start against Canterbury, he produced an identical number of runs and run metres in a similar stint to drive North Queensland to their sixth win in their last seven starts.
To Morgan, who has known Taumalolo since he was 15, it’s not a surprise.
“He’s a very proud person. He never wants to go out there and not perform. He’s too proud to do that,” Morgan said.
That pride has returned Taumalolo from the beyond, a decade after his greatness began, to lead a new generation, some who idolised him as boys.
Jaxon Purdue, the club’s crack centre, was just five years old that night Henry took a chance on the big kid with the bigger future.
All of the legends that have come true since because Taumalolo has lived them is what makes Friday night both a celebration of what was, but also of what is and what may yet be to come.
Taumalolo’s record-breaking game is marked not just by commemoration but by resurrection.
His greatness was of another time; now it has returned. It looked broken, but it has been remade. It was lost and now it is found.
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