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Rugby league’s 300-game club currently has 18 members, including all-time greats such as Darren Lockyer and Brad Fittler. This weekend a far less heralded player will join the club when John Morris of the Cronulla Sharks plays his 300th game.
While many will be surprised to learn that Morris has accumulated so many games, his achievement is the equal of, and indeed in some ways superior, to that of luminescent talents like Lockyer and Fittler.
Though Morris started his career with appearances on the wing in Newcastle, the bulk of his career has been spent as a hooker and halves Mr Fix-It. Bouncing from one role in the spine to another, he has also spent whole seasons relegated to the true ‘utility’ jersey No. 14.
No other player in the game really comes close to matching Morris’s utility credentials.
Certainly many players have spent bits and pieces of time out of their primary position, while others have made permanent switches. But no other player has bounced between positions for whole seasons at a time, each time making the ‘new’ position his own.
While his position may not have been consistent, his availability has been. To get to his 300th appearance in this his 14th season he has averaged over 22 games per season across four different clubs.
For a player whose teams have rarely been involved in deep finals runs, this is some achievement.
It will seem like a backhanded compliment at best, but it is intended sincerely. John Morris’ greatest accomplishment in reaching 300 games is that he has reached the milestone as a utility; as a man without a best position and as a man who I’m guessing most fans would view as eminently replaceable.
It is this very sense of expendability that makes Morris’ achievement so impressive, even when compared to the greats. In an era of mega talents and under-20s prodigies, Morris is something of a throwback.
For 14 years he has continued to find a way to make himself valuable for NRL clubs, and that is no mean feat.
We can only hope his extraordinary achievement is duly celebrated this weekend and not swallowed by Origin hype.
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