Sweat, tears and tributes for Johnathan Thurston’s Townsville finale

Tributes have been flowing as Johnathan Thurston prepares to play his last NRL game in Townsville.

North Queensland Cowboys co-captain Johnathan Thurston ahead of his final home game in Townsville. Picture: Zak Simmonds

It’s dark. North Queensland training has finished long ago. There’s a light on in Peter Parr’s office. Matt Bowen sticks his head in to say goodnight. Parr gets a fright. The joint is meant to be empty. He wants to know why Bowen is leaving so late. Bowen laughs, rolls his eyes. He says he’s been playing ping pong against Johnathan Thurston. For hours.

“I thought I was the only one left in the building,” Parr, the Cowboys’ football manager, tells The Australian on the eve of Thurston’s last home game at Townsville tonight. “They’d finished training hours before this. Mango (Bowen) was dripping with sweat. I said to him, ‘Mate, have you been doing extras?’ He looked like he’d been running laps or in the gym. He said, ‘No, no. I’ve been playing table tennis against JT. He wouldn’t let me go home until he won.’ I don’t know how long they’d been playing for, but it was a long time. Matty says before he goes: ‘Between you and me, and don’t tell Jonno this, but I had to throw the last game so I could get home in time for dinner’.”

Thurston was the next to Parr’s door. “JT walks past and he doesn’t have a shirt on,” Parr recalls. “He’s sweating up a storm, too. Same story. He looks like he’s been out on the field, doing extras. He tells me about the table tennis. And then he says to me, ‘I finally got him!’ I didn’t have the heart to tell him that Matty had to let him win just so he could get out of the place.

“He’s been one of a kind, JT. A whole lot of people are going to miss him, and there’s not many athletes you can say that about. He will be properly missed. He’s put this club, this town and North Queensland on the map. We’re going to enjoy tonight, but it’s sad. We’ve been blessed to have him.”

The little bloke in the No 7 jersey has made a career out of the show-and-go. Now he’s nearly gone for good. Tonight is his real farewell. Next week’s last NRL match, on the Gold Coast, will not carry half the passion. Tears will be shed in Townsville this evening. The homunculus in headgear will try to keep a lid on it … but he’s prone to become more emotional than the rest of us put together. There’ll be some bawl to accompany this evening’s brawl against Parramatta. As Parr says: “He’s an emotional character at the best of times. He wears his heart on his sleeve. That’s been one of the beauties of him. I think that he will attempt to control his emotions however, if history is anything to go by, he won’t be successful. That’s just how he is.”

Winning, losing, wooden spooning, scoring tries, missing tackles, having a blinder, having a shocker, none of it matters tonight. When an athlete of Thurston’s ­calibre gets to the end, only the highlights matter.

He’s treading the right sideline at ANZ Stadium in the 2015 grand final. A kick to win the comp. Kids in Cowboys jerseys, holding Cowboys banners, are sitting on their fathers’ shoulders.

The script is too good to be true. The heart and soul of the Cowboys … and he has this kick to win it. The utmost care is taken. He stands over the ball. Breathes deeply. He takes four steps backwards. Breathes deeply. Three steps to the left. Gulps. Another step back. Gulps. His conversions have always had the shape of a thrown boomerang. Thurston’s boot goes to ball. It starts out to the right. Perfect. But it stays there. Hits the post. He’s missed the bloody thing. But then. But then. He wins it in extra time with a field goal. Blood is caked around his left eye.

Among the thousand tributes are two that stand out because of who they’ve come from. Andrew Johns is one of the code’s Immortals. What Johns has meant to Newcastle Knights, Thurston has meant to the Cowboys, which is saying something. Johns has done a video tribute in which he bows to the show-and-go and laments the fact Thurston has smoked NSW in State of Origin for a decade. He finishes with: “Mate, have a great night. I’m going to be watching. A great player. A once-in-a-­generation player. You ARE the Cowboys. Rip in.”

But it’s another message, from Thurston’s mighty indigenous brother Greg Inglis, that is the most powerful. Inglis looks tense because he’s trying so hard to do it justice. To find the right words. A horde of Melbourne Storm, South Sydney, Queensland, Australia and All-Stars players will tell their future children that they had the honour of playing against Inglis. But a trembling Inglis says to, and of, Thurston: “I wanted to say, firstly, congratulations on the marvellous career that you’ve had. From those dreadlocked days back at the Bulldogs to being one of the most powerful and influential indigenous players in the game today. You probably don’t like hearing this but you will definitely go down as an Immortal. It’s been an honour and a privilege to play beside you. A massive thank you … you’ve taught me a lot. Your stats speak for themselves. Your highlights speak for themselves. One day, I’ll get to tell my kids, and my grandkids, that I got to play with the great JT.”