The Backbone

This Friday Josh Papalii will walk out in front of the Canberra public for the last time. He will gaze out at the crowd of supporters that he has held aloft, stand arm in arm with the men that he made strong, take a deep breath and listen to the adulation rain down on him. He deserves it.

One final time through the tunnel of Bruce Stadium. Big Papa says he knows the time is now, there is no coda on this career. When he walks off that ground he can do so safe in the knowledge that he couldn’t have given more. He didn’t just matter to Canberra – the city and the team. He has been the backbone.

Everything that has happened to the Raiders has happened around him. He has been the constant, the centre of everything. When Canberra have gone well, Papa has gone well. When the Raiders have needed strength, he has provided it. When they’ve needed quiet grit and determination, he has rolled up those sleeves and given it.

Perfect imperfection. A man, growing before our eyes, the gift of experience, an increasing comfort and security in who he was as a person. A quiet belief in himself, perpetuated by his rare ability to succeed where others couldn’t, reinforced by the devotion of a city and a community.

Fifteen years as a Canberra Raider. The highest of the highs. Effort. Persistence. Leadership. Hard work when things were bad. Rumbling like thunder when things were good. Run after run after bustling run. Hit after hit after bone-crunching hit. He came to the Canberra Raiders a boy. He leaves as the encapsulation of the team for an entire generation of fans.

When they needed courage and confidence in the 2012 semi-final, he narrowed his vision, cranked his neck and terrified a man who had seen it all. When the Raiders needed a heroic effort in Melbourne to cap a comeback for the ages in 2019, he scored the try, won the match, and convinced them that a grand final was a possibility. He chased down Jamal Fogarty in 2020 with the same resolve as he approached a goal line carry.

At his best he was so profoundly deterministic. He made 2019 happen; put Canberra on his back and willed them to a grand final. Not just in the preliminary final, but for an entire year. But also that one night when 25,000 of his closest friends believed just for a bit, that they could fly. When he ran over Damian Cook he gifted us that feeling. It was more than elation. More than happiness. It was a brief moment in which I thought maybe there was more to football than just football. There was that feeling, a collective joy that was as exuberant as it was pervasive. They can never take that away from us.

The way he terrorised teams close to the line, his unmatched agility and power making him impossible to take one-on-one, two-on-one, fucking thirteen-on-one. Those moments left such an indelible mark on the rugby league community that even last weekend the human vibes machine Steve ‘Blocker’ Roach was still calling for him to be given the ball close to the line with the game on the line.

We owe him. I recognise the insanity of saying that about a man who’s earned a good deal of money playing a ball game for our entertainment. The world is weird these days and existence will make you cry if you look to close. There are so few things to hang on to. But Josh Papalii has given us things that will stay with us forever.

I saw every dirty carry of his career. Every time the Raiders asked to him dig deep and put them on his shoulders because no one else could. I saw it. I saw him bend the line despite being met by more men than a longbowman at Agincourt. The number of bodies in front of him didn’t matter. He just rumbled, young man, rumble.

This Friday when Josh Papalii walks off the field at Bruce Stadium he will know he’s given his all. In his words, everything has a perfect time for its conclusion, and he thinks that is now. I can’t agree with that. No one can live without their backbone.

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