At 80kg with 100 straight games and counting, is this the NRL’s toughest player?

In the NRL, the toughest of tough sports, we like our best to show their toughness.

Like Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, blood smeared across his face, hollering and whipping the crowd into a frenzy as he stalks the sideline, Gladiator style. Like Cameron McInnes, who as a boxer makes a very good rugby league player, because he has had so many nicks over the years he could probably have his very own cutman following him to each game with tubs of vaseline. Or Kalyn Ponga, who cranes his neck to watch another bomb rain down from the night sky, knowing the moment he catches it, he’s going to have two or three guys trying to annihilate him, legally, into the first row of the grandstand.

It’s easy to admire that toughness. But maybe the best toughness is the sort you don’t easily see. The toughness where there is nothing really remarkable about it.

Sharks hooker Blayke Brailey might be the toughest player left in this year’s finals series. Care to argue?

Yes, his face still has boyish looks, and not the years of scars like a Waerea-Hargreaves or a McInnes. But his body tips the scales at just 80kg (“81 on a good day”). He rumbles in the land of giants, and never seems to come out with anything even resembling a scratch. In the (thankfully) ultra-cautious concussion era, can you ever remember Brailey even coming out of a tackle a bit bent?

“Well, your footwork is a big part of it,” he says.

“My dad [Glenn] taught us a great technique about how to tackle when we were younger, getting your head in the right positions and to know my strengths in tackling. My youngest memories in tackling were my brothers and we would just tackle each other for hours. Dad would have a big punching bag and we would have to run and chase after it to tackle. People are always bigger than me, I’ve just got to find a way. Having some middles around you that help you out is a big factor. I’m never on my own out there.”

Sharks hooker Blayke Brailey.Credit: James Brickwood

The NRL is filled with numbers these days, a proliferation of the fantasy sports era and Americanisation of broadcast coverage, where there’s a statistic for everything. When Benji Marshall had a crippling run of injuries earlier in his career, there was one number he held in such high esteem: playing every game for the Tigers in the 2010 season. In rugby league clubs, they bestow you with the Ironman award.

A fortnight ago, Brailey chalked up 100 consecutive games without missing one. It was the fourth straight year he’d played every game for the Sharks during a regular season. His reward? A gift voucher for Westfield Miranda.

With 13 minutes to go in the round 27 match, his coach Craig Fitzgibbon bellowed for him to get off the field. Brailey was filthy. Apart from a 10-minute stint in the sin-bin earlier this season, he’d played every minute of every game this season, like 27 other players across the 17 clubs.

“I was actually blowing up,” Brailey laughs. “I was like, ‘Leave me out there’. I did have a goal to get to the 100 [consecutive games]. Everyone asks what the secret is, but I reckon there’s a bit of luck involved. It’s not easy to play that many consecutively in the middle. There has to be luck involved.”

But just luck?

“All through the grades I’ve always played every game,” he says. “I just expect myself to play every minute of every game. Anything less than that, I don’t really think about. There are definitely games you’re going in a little bit sore or a little bit tired and in the back of your mind you’re thinking, ‘A week off would help’. But for me, it’s never an option.”

Blayke Brailey runs the ball against the Cowboys.Credit: Getty

While NRL stars take in Premier League or NBA games each off-season and holiday to exotic destinations, Brailey is never too far away from the local fields in the Shire, running himself to a standstill. This off-season, he wants to do more long-distance running, even if he has to keep the extent of it hidden from Cronulla’s high-performance staff.

“I’ll go to the park with my little brother [Taj] in the off-season and we’ll just do drills,” he says. “I will go as hard as I can to get myself prepared for the season. The fitness side of things when it gets a bit tougher, I like seeing what you can come up with.”

On Friday night, Brailey will stand toe-to-toe with North Queensland’s man mountains in Jordan McLean and Jason Taumalolo as the Sharks try to win their first finals game since 2018. It will be another notch in one of the NRL’s most remarkable streaks, put together in Brailey’s typically unremarkable way: maximum efficiency and with little fanfare.

“He probably is the heart of our team,” shrugs teammate Tom Hazelton when asked about Brailey. “He doesn’t miss a game, he plays every minute and he cares a lot about his football. He might play it off as being cool and calm, but he loves this club. He’s always the hardest trainer – and we love him here.”

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