POWER WITHOUT GLORY

Retired rugby league great Johnathan Thurston will continue to make his mark. It’s just that it won’t happen to the sound of applause

- DANIEL WILLIAMS

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 photoshoot 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 helps he was prepared, having embraced the idea that the smart man retires not from something but