What Jason Taumalolo means to Tongan rugby league

By means of Nick Campton ABC

Much of the discussion surrounding Jason Taumalolo these days is dominated by what he is no longer.

He is not one of the best players in the world as he was in his prime. He is not the voracious meter-eater of recent days, or the late-game predator whose return to the field for his second stint should have been accompanied by the Jaws theme.

His feet aren’t that fast and his motor isn’t forever. He’s not the same player who signed a 10-year contract with the Cowboys in 2017 and he’s still getting $1 million per season from that deal, which the salary cap fetishists will never let you forget.

None of this should be surprising. The time comes for all of us, even for the greats, and Taumalolo at 31 is a lion in the winter, and that’s what happens when you face fourteen years of the biggest, strongest and baddest players who play these big, strong and common sport has to offer.

Only with Tonga are we reminded of what Taumalolo still is and always will be.

After their match against Australia two weeks ago. Many Tongan fans stuck around long after their full-time stint, most of them wanting a piece of Taumalolo. Even after all this time, he had gained enough ula lole to burden even a man with his immense strength.

Children too young to witness his greatest deeds stared in awe at Tonga’s living legend.

The crowd, which tended to get into the action of almost everything Tonga did well and had a new generation of stars to choose from, roared loudest and longest when Taumalolo charged at the ball and, for brief moments, smashed it in every inch looked as it once did.

To his people, he is still larger than life, an icon and a pioneer, even if he is no longer the best player on the team. It is possible that Tonga will one day have a better player, as difficult as that is to imagine.

When Taumalolo made the move from New Zealand to Tonga on the eve of the 2017 World Cup, he was the best striker of his era and that’s hard to match, let alone surpass, but that’s what we say about all the greats when they at their best their greatest.

What is certain is that no player can ever do more for Tonga, even if he wins the Pacific Championship, even if he ever wins the World Cup. No one else can give them life, because Taumalolo already did it.

The national team existed before Taumalolo’s move. They were no less proud than they are now and the thankless task of keeping the team alive in those difficult, unforgiving times paid off when Taumalolo had anything to return to at all, but before then most Pasifika plowing is more of a starting point for young people or an ending point for veterans.

We used to call them minnows. We certainly don’t anymore.

More than the runs or the hits or the Sivi Tau, that is what will make Taumalolo live forever and why his status transcends age, form or time. That is why he is an icon not only of the Tongan league, but of Test rugby as a whole.

He is the most influential international player since the dawn of time, since the players who got it all started over a century ago because, like them, he was the first of his kind.

It is now seven years since Taumalolo gambled on red and helped Tonga to a semi-final place at that World Cup, long enough for the team to look completely different.

Only three players besides Taumalolo from that tournament still play in the Tongan squad. Current teammates like Isaiya Katoa and Lehi Hopoate were barely teenagers.

They know a different world to the one Taumalolo found himself in, one where a match between Tonga and the Kangaroos can attract 33,000 fans – the biggest attendance for a non-World Cup test in Australia in a decade – as well as a huge television audience.

This is a world where Tonga can tour England as an attraction in its own right, where the idea of ​​New Zealand playing Tonga this weekend feels not like charity or goodwill or a glorified training round, but like a great clash where passions run deep because honor is at stake. line.

This transformation started with him because of one man’s decision – at the height of his powers – to bring it all back home. Many followed his example, enough to transform Tonga into a new power overnight, but they all came in his wake.

For Australia and Tonga, the best is yet to come

Australia and Tonga went for leather in the Pacific Championship opener, but the best of both sides, and the tournament itself, is still waiting to unfold.

That wake remains long and wide, and people are still following. This new world that he helped create is one with a future.

Even though Taumalolo’s achievements as a player are closer to the end than the beginning, his greater legacy is only just beginning.

Samoa, who are currently on their own inaugural tour of England, have spoken at length about how their own 2022 revolution was inspired by Taumalolo’s decision for Tonga and that for a generation of players the idea of ​​representing one’s heritage has been normalized and glorified.

It is an invaluable gift to rugby league, one that makes this whole enterprise sustainable.

A golden cluster of talents can keep a team afloat for a year or two or five, but to keep this going and to create the framework that makes a representative generational generation, new blood must eventually come.

That blood is almost upon us and a big change beckons for Tonga. Kristian Woolf will step down as coach at the end of the Pacific Championships after more than a decade at the helm. This could be the final tournament for the last strong players from before the revolution, such as Tui Lolohea and Siliva Havili.

Taumalolo himself may not be in the jersey for much longer, even though you get the feeling he would play for Tonga for the rest of his life if he could, and Tonga would be lucky to have him.

To them he is more than a man, but as a man he is still more effective than he is given credit for. Taumalolo was strong against Australia, not that ancient force that once moved earth and heaven, but who could that be?

The game has changed since its glory days. The fixed restart rule has sped up the game and made bulk forward distance less prominent – in 2019, 18 of the league’s 30 most prolific meter-eaters were forwards compared to just six of the top 30 in 2024 – reducing the impact of the league’s biggest strengths Taumalolo.

Regardless of the rule changes, Taumalolo was never going to enjoy the immortal final years that a great playmaker could find in his later years anyway.

Center forwards don’t really get that and no one has been doing it for as long as they ever could.

Given that Taumalolo made his debut a few months after his 16th birthday in 2010 and is under contract until the end of 2027, when he will be 34, there is a good chance that he will have spent around half his life as a footballer by the time he retires . top football player. It all catches up with you eventually.

Until then, he’ll still be an effective rotation forward at the very least.

He still has that equipment where he charges at the ball and changes direction so violently and quickly for a man his size that it seems to defy the laws of physics – now it only happens once or twice a game instead of about ten.

Tonga will need some more of that classic stuff against New Zealand this weekend. It is an important match for them because it is winnable.

The Kiwis have similar strengths in attack and width, and similar playing limitations with their backbone.

They are good enough that a win over them would be appreciated, but vulnerable enough that a win is possible and Tonga could use another big scalp.

They have lost their last five matches, all against Samoa, England and Australia.

Such a losing streak is a sign of the increased competition they now face and exposure to that level is a net positive, but ultimately they need the red meat of a good win to keep the whole thing going.

They can get one here because there is so much talent and to a man they will be better for the post-match run against the Kangaroos.

They need big games from Addin Fonua-Blake and Eli Katoa and an improvement from Isaiya Katoa, the young prince on whom so much depends.

This team is good enough that they don’t need some talent like a younger Taumalolo to carry them, but Tonga – its players, its fans, its people – will still be watching him and why wouldn’t they?

A lion in winter is still a lion.

-ABC