Remembering the best of Greg Inglis, the greatest athlete rugby league has ever seen

In 111 years of Australian rugby league we have never seen anything like Greg Inglis before and now the Queensland, Australian and Rabbitohs legend has retired we may never again.

SYDNEY, AUSTRALIA - OCTOBER 05: Greg Inglis of Souths scores a try during the 2014 NRL Grand Final match between the South Sydney Rabbitohs and the Canterbury Bulldogs at ANZ Stadium on October 5, 2014 in Sydney, Australia. (Photo by Renee McKay/Getty Images)

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If you ever dream of calling someone the next Greg Inglis you’ll need to wake up and apologise.

Inglis might be the greatest athlete in rugby league history. In terms of power, speed, agility and strength being wrapped into a total package there’s never been anyone like him and there may never be again.

So much of rugby league is about “the next”. We hunger to crown the new as the successors of the old. When Latrell Mitchell first came on the scene the trendy comparison was to Inglis but with due respect to Mitchell, a fine player in his own right, we may never see the like of Inglis again.

Inglis has always seemed special.

By the time he was 19, Inglis was already a phenom. His 2006 season arguably remains his most spectacular. With Billy Slater missing a large swath of the season due to injury and suspension, Inglis slotted in at fullback and made the best players in the world look juvenile.

Young Inglis ran like flowing water, moving with a grace, an ease, a balance that belied his quickness.

He was lithe like a snake, but still powerful enough to wear a shot and bust through a tackle. Inglis would have been a success at whatever sport he chose, but no player has looked as made for rugby league, nobody arrived into first grade as fully formed.

There has been a roaring trade on social media these past few days of Inglis highlights, but some of the things he did as a young man live with viewers forever. No player of the modern era captured the imagination like Inglis. Even going back to the grainy Queensland Cup highlights when Inglis was at Norths Devils he looks special.

It was 2006 when we first saw what Inglis could be.

There was his Test double against New Zealand in 2006 at the Telstra Dome, the first of which came out of nothing and the second finishing a breathtaking, 70-metre run where he left the Kiwis grasping at nothing but the dust.

Or another double, this time in a grand final against Manly in 2007. Inglis was playing five-eighth that day purely because it didn’t matter where he played. His first try was a bulldozing effort through four defenders, his second another long-range kill, when he poured on to a Brett White offload, got into the backfield and poor Michael Robertson couldn’t have stopped him with a shotgun.

A large part of the Inglis legend was built in Origin football and you can trace his transformation into a dominant force at that level to Game II of the 2008 series. In the opening quarter of the match he set up two tries for Darius Boyd, trampling and hurdling Steve Turner as he went. On those nights when Inglis was hitting top gear the other players didn’t just look inferior, they looked like a different species.

There was no stopping Inglis in those days, not really. Sure, there were times when Inglis had a game off here or there when he didn’t empty the tank. Greatness was never enough because his ceiling was so high. But when he really had to go and the pedal hit the floor it was like trying to catch the wind.

Young Inglis was like the wind.

It was a different Inglis that arrived at South Sydney in 2011. He was still a young man, just 24, but had already done so much. Then we saw the start of the new Inglis, when his power became as well known as his speed. Inglis was always powerful – who could forget the moment in 2009 when he quite literally threw Jamie Soward out of his way with one hand – but as a Rabbitoh it became the cornerstone of this game.

At Melbourne, Inglis was the wind. At South Sydney, he was the hammer.

In 2012 he made the move that had been beckoning for his entire career, slotting in at fullback. His first match there was against Penrith, in Round 3 of that year and it was like a king taking back the throne. He scored a try that day, trampling over Lachlan Coote as if the Panthers man had personally wronged him.

Thus began the second Inglis era. He was still deadly, but in a different way. Young Inglis wanted to break through, Rabbitohs Inglis just wanted to break.

It was a different Greg Inglis at South Sydney. Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images.

The recent Inglis highlights are more punishing than breathtaking: His 2014 try against the Broncos, when he broke seven tackles on a mazy run to the line, for example, or the hit parade he went on in last year’s Origin series, or his thunderous shoulder charge on Dean Young in 2012, which remains the most terrifying thing this writer has ever seen on a football field and led to that tackle being outlawed.

Players like Inglis aren’t supposed to get old. As recently as October last year Inglis wasn’t just a walk up start for Australia, as he has been for so long, he was supposed to be the captain.

Inglis leaves a wonderful legacy.

But the wear and tear of so many battles had taken their toll, the cost of starting so fast and so young. In addition to his 263 NRL games, Inglis played 39 Tests and 32 Origin matches. His knees have been shot for years, his shoulder isn’t what it was and Inglis has been courageously honest about the mental toll the injuries have taken.

His career will not end with a retirement tour, like Johnathan Thurston, or with a glorious memory like Cameron Smith or with a chance at a premiership like Billy Slater. Perhaps that why it feels so abrupt, almost like it’s not real. There have been two nondescript games this season and that’s it. It shouldn’t be that way, not for a man of his talent, not after all the things he’s done.

We will never see his likes again. Photo by Renee McKay/Getty Images.

It’s not fair that Inglis won’t get to stretch out one more time, that he won’t get one last chance to show his quality. But he will live in rugby league memory for as long as the game is played.

There’s a word the Maoris use – mana. It’s a mix of power and prestige, an aura, when the elemental forces of nature become embodied in a person.

I don’t know if there’s a word for mana in Dunghutti. But if there is, Inglis has it.

Originally published as Remembering the best of Greg Inglis, the greatest athlete rugby league has ever seen