POWER WITHOUT GLORY

SPEND A LITTLE TIME with Johnathan Thurston and you start to appreciate something that hadn’t seeped in despite having watched him play for what seemed like forever. He’s a survivor. The latest (relatively mild) test of his mettle: a protracted Men’s Health photo shoot in enervating heat and humidity on the streets of Townsville. Thurston’s a big deal around here. And lots of passers-by – men, women, children; Indigenous and non-Indigenous townsfolk; the sharply dressed and the down at heel – seek their moment with him. He’s friendly to everyone. He flashes his signature beaming smile. There’s even a hint of the signature kookaburra laugh. Job done, he takes a load off in the airconditioned comfort of the grandly named The Drawing Room on Flinders, and between sips of coffee opens up about a more forbidding challenge he’s been trying to wrestle into submission: The Void.

“The thought of life without rugby league scared me,” admits Thurston, who retired in 2018 having played roughly 400 games at rugby league’s pointy end – NRL, State of Origin, Test matches. “I didn’t know who I’d be. I knew the first year would be crucial. That’s when a lot of guys fall into, I suppose, depression.”

Eighteen months in, it’s a case of so far, so good. Life as a normal guy is going better than he’d expected. It something but something. You keep busy. And something else was just as key: letting go. You have to jettison the idea that the highs you experienced as a player will be reproducible in another field. Forget it, advised Ben Creagh, the premiership-winning St George player who called it a day back in 2016. “There is nothing out there that is going to fill that void,” he told Thurston. “As soon as you’re at peace with that, your transition will go better.”