The ties that bind Cooper Cronk, Cameron Smith and Billy Slater together ahead of their last game for Melbourne

AS Billy Slater, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk prepare for their final NRL game together, we look at the ties that bind the Big Three.

BILLY SLATER reckons you never had to watch them play to learn the difference between he and Cooper Cronk. You just went to the car park.

The duo still taunt each other about their first set of wheels.

Slater has revealed in his just released autobiography how his 1989 Mitsubishi Magna barely saw a hose, had moo-cow seat covers, roof racks and was very much the knocked about vehicle of a knockabout kind of guy.

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Cronk’s Nissan Pintara, referred to by Slaters as a Nana’s car, was routinely vacuumed and had a scented tree hanging from the rear view mirror.

It summed up the two boys ... the instinctive, devil-may-care fullback and the deep-thinking, meticulously prepared, spiritually slanted halfback.

Yet somehow they clicked.

Cronk, Slater and Smith have been playing together since the Under-19s.

Throw in another young rev head Cameron Smith, who still owns and claims he will never sell his prized 1971 Kingswood which was his first car, and you have the greatest one-two-three punch in modern rugby league.

Cronk sensed the story could have had a premature ending the night Smith’s car skewed sideways in a heavy storm on the Gateway arterial when he was taking Cronk to training at Norths.

Somehow they survived and it was there, 16 years ago, they sat in the front row of a Norths under-19 team photo looking very much the fresh-faced innocents they were having first met earlier that year at a training session at Nudgee College.

If you had told them then where their parallel lives would take them even their jaws would have hit the floor.

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All these years — and more than 1000 first grade games later — Cronk, Slater and Smith will play together for the last time in club colours on Sunday before Cronk moves to Sydney and possible retirement.

In an era of fleeting club loyalty this story stands out like an exploding comet. Three legends. One club. Sixteen years side-by-side.

“Our personalities are distinctly different,’’ Slater wrote.

“Cam is relaxed on the outside. He is still often the last to enter a team meeting or get on the bus.

“Coop is more intense and very measured and organised. I’m probably somewhere in between.’’

Racing man Slater may often be seen with his nose in a form guide and admits Cronk uses words he cannot understand.

He once read Cronk quotes claiming he was in a “state of grace’’ after a field goal and thought “I wonder where that came from … but that’s just Cooper.’’

The dynamics of their friendships have changed.

Cronk, Smith and Slater have one game left for Melbourne.

Initially Cronk and Slater spent more time together because Smith had a girlfriend (now his wife). Now Slater and Smith see more of each other because they have families.

Amazingly, after all these years they still go hard at each other in training.

Cronk says he would rather face anyone but Slater in a drill because you know it will be easier.

They are often called the Big Three but to a man they dislike the name because they know it makes the other members of the team look like faceless extras in a war movie.

Slater believes that when they do come together in retirement their chats will not be so much about football but old stories about cars, nights out, characters and jokes.

“We were united on that open playing field at Nudgee by our shared ambition. All these years later we have a relationship that goes beyond football or the success we have enjoyed. We’re mates for life.’’