At the closing of 102 premiership seasons, there are just 13 men in Rugby League’s ‘300 Club’. It’s a beautiful number for the Game these players have graced. Six of them are backs, six (mainly) forwards – with one, Canberra’s Jason Croker holding the middle ground, graduating from wing to the forwards in a career neatly balanced between the two. In some of their characteristics they are players as different as night and day - yet bound together by qualities that make this one of the truly exclusive clubs of Rugby League’s world. Shared among them are sublime skills (Darren Lockyer, Cliff Lyons), supreme athleticism (Andrew Ettingshausen), nonpareil goalkicking talent (Hazem El Masri) and the power of inspiration (all of them really, but perhaps especially Ruben Wiki). Within the ranks are great specialists… and great all-rounders.
Many words come readily to mind in the search to capture their qualities: physical and mental toughness, endurance, natural talent, attitude, dedication, loyalty, the spirit of “team”. In each one of them there lived, and lives – and very deeply entrenched - League’s ancient cornerstone of “fair play”. The legendary Australian swimming coach Don Talbot throughout his career has always rated longevity the final marking post in the test of whether an athlete is truly “great”. To a man these 13 pass that test, graduating with high honours. Three hundred games of elite level club Rugby League equates to 400 solid hours of playing the toughest and most demanding body contact sport in the world. Yet all of them played far more football than that of course - through representative honours won, the ongoing accompaniment to their weekly lives as club footballers. All of those games, all of those hours carried a certain legacy of pain and challenge, tough Mondays beyond counting and times of uncertainty. But from the first of them through the 300 barrier (Geoff Gerard) they carried on - playing the game they loved, season after season and so inscribing their names on a very special honour board. In time as the game heads on they will be joined by others, men of similar calibre. In 2009, rugby league salutes the Mighty 13 as they step up to take their rightful places in the game’s pantheon.
By Ian Heads