This was published 7 years ago
Statistics reveal full extent of Jason Taumalolo's demolition job on Broncos
By Phil Lutton
At long last, Paul Green may have finally created his monster. Jason Taumalolo has been uncorked to the extent that anything close to a repeat of his Friday-night heroics could render the Cowboys virtually unstoppable in their quest for back-to-back NRL titles.
Now that every egg joke has been cracked and the dust has settled on the 26-20 win, it's worth standing back and taking in the majesty of the 23-year-old's virtuoso effort in Townsville. It was a symphony of destruction, as decisive as it was devastating.
The Sharks will be hoping that game against Brisbane, another nail-biting extra-time heart-stopper, was North Queensland's grand final a few weeks early. They will also pray that Taumalolo's performance was a career peak he surely can't repeat, especially in consecutive weeks.
The Kiwi lock was almost a one-man forward pack against the Broncos, charging into their defensive line with a venom rarely before seen in his career. Already voted as the game's best player by his peers, this was Taumalolo inflicting damage on an entirely new level.
Jason Taumalolo of the Cowboys was almost a one-man forward pack against the Broncos.Credit: Bradley Kanaris
At 191cm and 113kg, blessed with speed and endurance, this was the kind of game his supporters always felt he was capable of delivering. Perhaps it took a miniature scandal for it to manifest but now the challenge is to see whether Taumalolo can maintain the rage in coming weeks.
Andrew Johns has already called him a "freak of nature" but you really need the concrete numbers to appreciate the scale of his performance in the Far North, which the figures from Champion Data say was one of the top five of any forward this season.
They are notable not just for their heights in individual categories but how far they surpassed the standard he had set for most of the season. If he were competing with only himself, Taumalolo scored a knockout victory in almost every stat that matters.
The most quoted figure has been his 245m of running with the football, which is 79m further than his 166m average on the 2016 season and the seventh time he's amassed 200-plus metres for the year.
On top of that, it was 155m more than the previous week against the Storm, when he carried for just 90m in what would be his second-lowest figure of the entire year.
The hits kept coming, quite literally for the Broncos. His 29 tackles was his third-highest of the year (averages 23) and he managed 26 possessions, his second-highest for the season and six more than his average.
Taumalolo smashed his way through nine tackles against Brisbane's high-quality defence (averages three) and dished out the pain for a season-high 76 minutes when he averages just 52 minutes.
Even when you take off the 10-minute period of extra time, Taumalolo still pushed himself further than at any stage of the season. His previous best was 63 minutes of service for his coach in round 16.
And if on the surface you thought it looked like an elite performance, you were on the money. Champion Data rates his outing as the fifth best of the year from a big man, although none arrived at such a pivotal time.
Of the players on that list, only one still has any say in the finals, that being Sharks hard man Wade Graham. He won't have to wait long for his showdown with North Queensland's freshly primed cannonball.
Five best performances from an NRL forward in 2016
Greg Bird (R21) ran 245m, 35 tackles, seven tackle breaks, 36 possessions
Martin Taupau (R23) ran 269m, 26 tackles, six tackle breaks, 22 possessions
Sam Burgess (R13) ran 266m, 52 tackles, six tackle breaks, 34 possessions
Wade Graham (R21) ran 255m, 31 tackles, 3 tackle breaks, 33 possessions
Jason Taumalolo (SF) ran 245m ran, 29 tackles, nine tackle breaks, 26 possessions