BY DAN

In a world where nothing is forever and institutions are crumbling before our very eyes, Joe Tapine is a constant.

He shouldn’t be. He’s on the north side of 30, the age at which middle forwards tend to go from trustworthy carriage of hopes and dreams to pumpkin. 12 seasons deep he keeps doing *it*, and at some point that will end. But it doesn’t look like now. In a sport where variability reigns, Tapine is the polar opposite. The king of certainty, an output you can copy paste across the season, safe in the knowledge that he’ll deliver.

Year 12 was another cracker. Obviously one of the best in the league at his position, he continued to produce in all facets of his work. He produces volume: sixth in metres at his position (2918), third in offloads (43), seventh in runs over eight metres. He creates; second in try assists, seventh in line-breaks, second in line-break assists. Pick your favourite countable and it reflected the dominance we saw on the park every week.

Despite the volume of work he got through, despite the number of successful offloads, he wasn’t even in the top 50 for errors at his position. For comparison, his meterage peers at the position had the fourth most errors (Terrell May), sixth (Tino), eighth (Addin Fonua-Blake) and seventeenth (Payne Haas). According to Code Sports, Taps had fewer errors in 2025 than James Fisher-Harris, Reagan Campbell-Gillard, Nelson Asofa-Solomona, Ian Baker-Finch, Kareem Abdul-Jabbar, Arantxa Sánchez Vicario, and even Shai Gilgeous-Alexander had last names.

Despite being the focus of opposition defences he was seventh in total runs over eight metres, and about 37th in total runs under seven metres. Apart from Addin Fonua-Blake, that same list of players all had a heap more runs under seven metres. 200 of May’s 434 runs were under seven metres (46.1 per cent). 36.3 per cent of Haas’ runs were under 7 seven metres. 39.1 per cent of Tino’s. Joey Taps was down at 32.4 per cent.

It was dazzlingly consistent. Bankable and brilliant. A known quantity that impressed nearly every week. 140 odd metres turning sets on their head with an extra five metres through contact, an offload, or a quick play the ball. You know it was coming. So did they. It was safety, his output like a warm hug from a sleepy mum for a toddler climbing into her bed. The metres, the knowledge that good things came from it, the absolute lack of risk of error in propelling the team down the field.

It’s reflective of how far he’s come. There was a time where people weren’t sure what to make of Tapine. He had all the talent on earth, but it never seemed to be matched with anything approaching consistency. One week’s dynamism was met with another week’s adequateness.

Stunning moments like nearly beating the Tigers himself in 2018, or forcing the error on Josh Addo-Carr in the 2019 qualifying final, were juxtaposed against the 2019 grand final when momentary fatigue meant his back was to the ball when Sam Verrills began tearing towards the try line. He was equal parts frustrating and blindingly brilliant, never able to put it together for a whole game.

By his own admission he had more to give. He was years into his career before he was consistently lifting weights. It wasn’t until 2020, five years into his first-grade career, we went out on a limb to proclaim that maybe, just maybe he was getting it. He’d already been a starting middle in a grand final team by that point.

Well, he got it all right. We’ve been living the dream on the back of it. And if the Raiders are going to go further in 2026 they’ll be banking on getting more of it.

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