Jason Taumalolo leads the Sipi Tau for Tonga against England at the 2017 Rugby League World Cup semi-final at Mt Smart Stadium, Auckland. Photo: Anthony Au-Yeung / www.photosport.nz
By Nick Campton, ABC
So much of the discussion these days around Jason Taumalolo is dominated by what he isn't anymore.
He is not one of the best players in the world, as he was in his prime. He is not ravenous metre-eater of days past, or the late-game predator whose return to the field for his second stint should have been accompanied by the Jaws theme.
His feet are not as fast and his motor is not perpetual. He is not the same player who signed a 10-year contract with the Cowboys back in 2017 and he is still on a million dollars a season from that deal, which the salary cap fetishists will never let you forget.
None of this should surprise. Time comes for us all, even the greats, and Taumalolo is a lion in winter at 31, which is what happens when you've spent 14 years running into the biggest, strongest and meanest players this big, strong and mean sport has to offer.
It is only with Tonga that we are reminded of what Taumalolo still is and always will be.
After their match against Australia two weeks ago. plenty of Tongan fans stuck around well after full-time, most of them wanting a piece of Taumalolo. Even after all this time, he was gifted enough ula lole to weigh down even a man of his immense strength.
Children who were too young to experience his greatest deeds stared in awe at Tonga's living legend.
The crowd, who were apt to rise at just about anything Tonga did well and have a new generation of stars to choose from, roared loudest and longest when Taumalolo surged onto the ball and, for brief moments, looked every inch as he once did.
For his people, he is still larger than life, an icon and trailblazer, even if he's not the best player on the team anymore. It's possible Tonga could one day have a better player, as hard as that is to imagine.
Sika Manu, Will Hopoate and Jason Taumalolo during the Tonga national anthem prior to kickoff against the Kangaroos in 2022. Photo: PHOTOSPORT
When Taumalolo switched from New Zealand to Tonga on the eve of the 2017 World Cup he was the best forward of his time and that's a hard thing to match, let alone surpass, but we say that of all the greats when they're at their greatest.
What is certain is that no player can ever do more for Tonga, even if they won the Pacific Championship, even if they won the World Cup one day. Nobody else can give them life because Taumalolo already did.
The national side existed before Taumalolo's switch. They were no less proud than now and the thankless task of keeping the team alive in those hard, unforgiving times paid off in full when Taumalolo had something to go back to at all, but before then most Pasifika sides were more of a starting point for youngsters or an end point for veterans.
We used to call them minnows. We sure don't anymore.
More than the runs or the hits or the Sivi Tau, that is what will make Taumalolo live forever and why his status transcends age or form or time. It's why he's an icon of not just Tongan but of Test rugby league as a whole.
He is the most influential international player since the dawn of these times, since the players who got all this started over a century ago because he, like them, was the first of a kind.
It is seven years now since Taumalolo bet on red and helped Tonga to a semifinal berth in that World Cup, long enough that the team looks totally different.
Only three players besides Taumalolo from that tournament are still in the Tongan side. Current teammates like Isaiya Katoa and Lehi Hopoate were barely teenagers.
Kiwis centre Peta Hiku with Tonga forward Jason Taumalolo during the Kiwis Fan Day at Lilyworld. Photo: Brett Phibbs / www.photosport.nz
They know a different world to the one Taumalolo came into, a world where a match between Tonga and the Kangaroos can draw 33,000 fans - the largest attendance for a non-World Cup Test in Australia in a decade - as well as a bumper television audience.
This is a world where Tonga can tour England as a standalone attraction, where the idea of New Zealand playing against Tonga this weekend does not feel like charity or goodwill or a glorified training run but a marquee clash where passions run deep because honour is on the line.
This transformation started with him, because of one man's decision - at the very peak of his game - to bring it all back home. Plenty followed his lead, enough to turn Tonga into a new power overnight, but they all came in his wake.
For Australia and Tonga, the best is still yet to come
Australia and Tonga went hell for leather in the Pacific Championships opener but the best of both sides, and the tournament itself, is still waiting to unfold.
That wake continues to be long and wide, and people are still following. This new world he helped create is one with a future.
Even if Taumalolo's achievements as a player are closer to the end than the beginning, his greater legacy is just getting started.
Samoa, who are currently undergoing their own inaugural tour of England, have spoken at length how their own revolution in 2022 was inspired by Taumalolo's decision for Tonga and for a whole generation of players the idea of representing one's heritage has been normalised and glorified.
It's a priceless gift for rugby league, one which makes this whole enterprise sustainable.
A golden cluster of talent can keep a team up for a year or two or five but to make this last, to create the framework that makes a representative side generational there has to be fresh blood eventually.
That blood is almost upon us and a great change beckons for Tonga. Kristian Woolf will stand down as coach at the end of the Pacific Championships after over a decade at the helm. This may well be the final tournament for the last stalwarts from before the revolution, like Tui Lolohea and Siliva Havili.
Tonga forward Jason Taumalolo with family during a Fan Day in Auckland. Photo: Brett Phibbs / www.photosport.nz
Taumalolo himself might not be long for the jersey, although you get the sense he'd play for Tonga for the rest of his life if he could and Tonga would be glad to have him.
He is more than a man to them but as a man he's still more effective than he's given credit for. Taumalolo was strong against Australia, not that old strength that once moved earth and heaven, but who could be?
The game has changed since his glory days. The set restart rule has sped up the game and made bulk forward yardage less prominent - in 2019, 18 of the 30 most prolific metre-eaters in the competition were forwards compared to just six of the top 30 in 2024 - effectively reducing the impact of Taumalolo's greatest strengths.
Regardless of rule changes, Taumalolo was never going to enjoy the deathless final years a great playmaker might find in their later years anyway.
Middle forwards don't really get those and nobody who's been doing this for as long as him ever could.
Given Taumalolo debuted a few months after his 16th birthday in 2010 and is under contract until the end of 2027, when he'll be 34, there's a fair chance that by the time he retires he'll have spent around half his life as a top flight footballer. That all catches up with you eventually.
Until that time comes, he'll still be an effective rotation forward at the very least.
He still has that gear where he surges onto the ball and changes direction so violently and quickly for a man of his size it seems to defy the laws of physics - now it just happens once or twice a game instead of a dozen or so.
Tonga will still need a little of that classic stuff against New Zealand this weekend. It's an important match for them because it's winnable.
The Kiwis have similar strengths in the forwards and out wide and similar playmaking limitations with their spine.
They're good enough that a win over them would be prized but vulnerable enough that a win is possible and Tonga could do with another big scalp.
They've lost their last five matches, all of which came against Samoa, England and Australia.
Such a losing run is a mark of the greater competition they now face and exposure to that level is a net positive, but eventually they need the red meat of a good win to keep the whole thing going.
They can get one here because there is so much talent and to a man they'll be better for the run after the match against the Kangaroos.
They'll need big games from Addin Fonua-Blake and Eli Katoa and an improvement from Isaiya Katoa, the young prince upon whom so much depends.
This team is good enough that they don't need a singular talent like a younger Taumalolo to carry them but Tonga - its players, its fans, its people - will still look to him and why wouldn't they?
A lion in winter is still a lion.
-ABC
