NRL 2021: Souths prop Mark Nicholls reveals why he always disappeared 10 minutes into every game

It’s a running joke at Souths. Their workaholic prop rises from the interchange bench at a precise time of the game and, without a word, heads up the tunnel. Now we can reveal why.

When Mark Nicholls first started disappearing 10 minutes into every NRL game he played, nobody even noticed.

Yet now? Now, it’s a running joke at South Sydney.

So predictable too that, over the past 18 months, Rabbitohs blue shirt John Sutton has even set his watch to coincide with Nicholls rising from that interchange bench and, without a word, jogging off and up the tunnel of whichever stadium they’re playing at.

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South Sydney prop Mark Nicholls celebrates a rare try. NRL Imagery

Exactly when it started? Nicholls himself has no idea.

For as long as he can remember, his game-day ritual has always involved returning to the sheds when that match clock hits double digits.

Same as before games, he must also shower in the dressing room. After that, take an ice bath.

“Then 10 minutes into the game,” he says, “I disappear to the toilet”.

Strange? Absolutely.

But so too is the career of this NRL journeyman who, as recently as June, had churned through 10 seasons, three clubs and 94 first grade games – yet never started once.

“Actually, no, there was one game,” Nicholls says after a pause, almost apologetically. “Three years ago, I started a game for Souths.

“But for every other game before this year, they’d all been off the bench.”

Which is how rugby league’s strangest superstition began.

“Initially, it was a time-waster,” the prop continues. “A way to conserve nervous energy. Then after a while it just became something I had to do.”

But define him? No, if anything, Nicholls is the guy who refuses to leave.

The 31-year-old is finally getting the opportunity to start games.

Some claim when you learn how during his 2014 season with Canberra, this country kid from Leeton went an entire year without coach Ricky Stuart playing him. Just as Craig Bellamy would do himself, two winters later in Melbourne.

All up, part of a run which in his first six years of NRL, saw the interchange forward make just 28 appearances.

“Including twice,” he says, “where I waited two years between games.”

But disappear? No, Nicholls has continually done the opposite.

Sure, he may still be something like Johnny Anonymous in a Souths side boasting the likes of Cody Walker, Cam Murray and Latrell Mitchell. A fella who may have debuted the same year as Bunnies favourite Adam Reynolds, yet has played less than half his 227 games.

Yet know that when Nicholls runs out for this Friday night’s blockbuster against the Roosters, he will do so with two plates in his cheek, two rods in his forearm and a leg broken in 2018.

The 31-year-old has also fought back from serious stress fractures in his foot – an injury he played on for a fortnight given it came immediately after returning from having all ligaments in his thumb reattached.

None of which most NRL fans know. But Bunnies players, they do.

Which is why within days of Bennett arriving at Redfern in 2019, and quietly pulling Sam Burgess aside to ask who should be kept, the Englishman immediately backed Nicholls.

“Doesn’t get much opportunity, Coach,” Burgess said. “But us boys, we want to play with him”.

Nicholls playing with Melbourne in 2017.

So ever since, they have.

Nicholls has amassed 66 appearances under the game’s oldest coach, and since Round 14 he has become a regular starter for the first time in his decade of NRL action.

Why does Bennett like him so much?

“Haven’t let Wayne down, I guess,” he says simply. “Just turn up, do my job.”

It’s not how Nicholls initially expected his rugby league life to go.

Growing up on acreage in the Riverina, this young Storm fan spent his afternoons mimicking Billy Slater on a backyard field made by the old man, Dave.

“Billy debuted when I was 12,” says Nicholls, who signed up to the Leeton Raiders aged four.

“So every afternoon after school – and I know this sounds silly – but I’d get out on that field and play games by myself.

“If Melbourne were versing, say, South Sydney, I’d go out there and recreate the match – chip kicking, passing, scoring tries, all of it. And every time, I was Billy Slater.”

Thing is though, he wasn’t.

Mark Nicholls makes his 2012 NRL debut for the Canberra Raiders.

It’s a truth Nicholls learned just three years later, when sweating through his first weeks at Canberra with fellow Harold Matthews Cup hopefuls.

“Every Friday we’d do testing, just to see which guys had what attributes,” he says. “And I quickly realised I wasn’t that fast, and I wasn’t that strong.”

So what was Nicholls good at?

“Trained hard,” he says. “And tried to make the most of whatever I did have.”

That ethic helped the affable Leeton product not only play NSW U18s and Junior Kangaroos, but make a dozen appearances in his first NRL season to claim Canberra Rookie of the Year honours.

But was it the start of big things? Um, no.

Instead, after a strong 2012 debut season, Nicholls would play just two more games over the next two years before, frustrated and wanting more, he quit for a one-year deal with the club he cheered as a schoolboy.

“All my life I’d seen guys go to Melbourne and become NRL players, representative players,” he says. “So I signed hoping Craig Bellamy might work his magic on me, too.”

Yet first year? Nicholls never played a game.

With thumb and foot injuries becoming part of an ongoing battle, the insecurity of four consecutive 12 month contracts weighed on him. Each one, minimum wage, too.

Mark Nicholls is loving life with the Rabbitohs.

Grind is nothing new for this footballer who over the past three years, on days off, has worked in both the Rabbitohs front office, then the sales department of a Sydney clothing company.

Just as during his five seasons with Canberra and Melbourne, Nicholls spent most weekends flying north into Brisbane for Queensland Cup games.

“Then after fulltime, I’d head straight back to the airport,” he recalls. “You’d get home at one o’clock in morning, then often go train with the NRL squad later that day.”

Even in 2017, when Nicholls played nine times for a Storm side that would eventually win the grand final, he still missed out on a premiership ring.

Then, got cut.

But not before earning at least a sprinkle of that Bellamy magic dust he craved.

“Every game I played for Melbourne, Craig would say ‘you might only get 10 minutes tonight, but be the hardest worker out there’,” Nicholls says. “He was always telling me that was my strength.”

Which mattered.

“At Canberra, I was always trying to play more like the guys ahead of me,” he continues. “But in Melbourne, I learned that hard work can really be enough.”

So when new Souths coach Anthony Seibold reached out just before the 2018 season with a contract – one year, minimum wage, no promises – Nicholls grabbed it.

Nichols has spent plenty of time warming the bench.

The start of what has now become not only four years packing down among Bunnies superstars, but come this Friday night’s local derby against the Roosters, his 11th straight game as a starter.

“So my regular toilet runs,” he laughs, “they’re over”.

Nicholls has also become a husband to wife Perrie, a father to baby girl Darcie, now 15 months, and completed not one, but two university degrees.

Outside of club community work, the Souths prop also volunteers at a Salvation Army shelter, and regularly encourages teammates to join him. Which to a man, they do.

Exactly as Burgess predicted for Bennett.

Yes, Nicholls may be the least hyped name at Redfern HQ. Yet if Souths are to become the side that really does go and upset a Melbourne juggernaut this year, much will depend on the workaholic prop they once cut.

A fella who played seven games in four seasons. Or 28 games in six.

A country boy who, the guy defending each side of him knows, will continue aiming up for however deep into the playoffs these Rabbitohs go.

Then after that?

“Ah, I’m off contract again,” Nicholls says.