Former South Sydney Rabbitohs under-20s coach Ryan Carr will never forget the first time he met Jordan Mailata.
After all, how could you not remember your encounter with a young lad who stood over two metres tall and was nearly 170kg?
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“He sort of stops you in your tracks … he’s such a giant human,” Carr told Fox Sports Australia.
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Mailata joined the Bunnies in late 2016 after being released by the Bulldogs due to a heart condition, desperate to prove himself to someone, anyone, in rugby league.
Carr and Maguire were more than happy to open the doors in Redfern for the Blacktown brute.
But Mailata had a lot of work to do before he graced the field for the Rabbitohs.
Despite possessing a very visible weapon with his sheer size, it meant little if he was not fit enough to perform on the park for large periods of time.
However, it never deterred Mailata from doing everything in his power to make the grade
Campbell Graham, one of Mailata’s former under-20s teammates for the 2017 season and now one of the Bunnies’ best today, recounts just how driven the 25-year-old was.
“When I played 20s with him, I remember the main thing about him was his humility,” Graham told Fox Sports Australia.
“He never took anything too seriously. He was always laughing and having a good time, but when it came to work he was committed.
“He was obviously the biggest lad that I have seen at our club and probably on a footy field in general.
“He worked extremely hard to lose weight so he was fit to play footy and he got himself in good enough shape to be able to play footy.”
Mailata, who arrived in Redfern weighing around 166kg, got himself down to the 130s range but, as Maguire noted, “there was a lot of work that he needed to do.”
That took place in the film room, as Mailata put in countless extra hours poring over every detail, pondering how he could elevate his game further.
“I remember I used to do video with players, they trained towards the afternoon most days because it was a part-time program back then and he’d stay back until nine o’clock at night outside my office,” Carr said.
“He’d wait until everyone had left and he’d want to watch video of other people, just to get better.
“When you see him doing well now it makes you so happy because he’s so persistent and so hardworking and wanted to make it.”
For Souths’ under-20s, Mailata was unsurprisingly a human wrecking ball.
The Bunnies even drew up a play specifically for Mailata — aptly titled ‘Jordan’ — where they’d get him one-on-one with an opponent, a scenario where there was no way to stop him.
There was also a game against the Warriors when they made a grave mistake once but bizarrely continued to make it.
“I remember we played the Warriors one day in the NYC and ended up beating them pretty well but they kept kicking off to him and I was like, ‘What are you doing?’” Carr said.
“’Why would you kick it to him? Kick it away from him’.
“But they kept kicking it to him and he kept making linebreaks off the kick-off.”
Graham wasn’t able to call on any specific memories from when they shared the field, but remembered Mailata “had some impressive highlights.”
But for all of the fun that spectators, coaches and teammates had watching Mailata stride forward with multiple players clinging on to him in an attempt to drag him down, there was a downside to it all.
Put simply, he just didn’t have the gas tank to play at the highest level of the sport, with Maguire describing Mailata as “too big” to play footy.
However, there was another that his skill set would be perfectly suited for.
“Rugby league requires a mix of aerobic and anaerobic fitness,” Maguire said.
“Attack, defend, get back the 10 metres and so on. And that’s not easy when you’re running around at his size.
“The club was interested in signing him for another season but, right around the time those conversations would have kicked off, his agent informed us that he was thinking of taking him to the States for a crack at American football.
“‘You’d be mad if you didn’t,’ I told him. It just made sense.
“I’ve seen the type of athletes that thrive in that sport. Jordan ticks a lot of those boxes.”
Maguire’s belief that Mailata would be a hit in American football didn’t take long to be proven right.
Thanks to Mailata’s agent Chris Orr sending highlight reels of the Bankstown bulldozer playing rugby league to NFL teams, coaches and scouts, the Aussie was invited to the NFL’s International Pathway Program.
So impressive was his showing that the Philadelphia Eagles, who had won the Super Bowl just two months earlier, drafted Mailata in April 2018.
And as they say, the rest is history.
Mailata has become one of the best left tackles in the league since making his debut in September 2020 and penned a four-year, $AUD92 million contract a year later.
In Carr’s eyes, Mailata’s remarkable rise in a sport that was completely alien to him five years ago, is completely deserved.
“To see him playing a high level in that position [left tackle], not just in a good team but contributing so much to how the team is doing, is so impressive,” Carr said.
“He’s worked so hard and deserves it.”
But for all of the accolades Mailata has received since bursting onto the scene in the NFL, none will be as sweet as winning the Super Bowl.
He’ll have the chance to do just that when the Eagles take on the Kansas City Chiefs on Monday in the biggest game of the year, with hundreds of millions expected to tune in.
That includes the entire Rabbitohs squad, who will watch the game with plenty of interest.
“I’m not sure if there are Eagles supporters, but there are definitely some of the boys who are big fans of the NFL,” Graham said.
“I’m sure a lot of the boys and the club in general will be behind Jordan and the Eagles in the Superbowl.
“We usually try to watch the Super Bowl together. We train in the morning and then look to go for lunch and watch the game, so it will be even better this year.
“We have got one of the boys who used to represent Souths. It’s very impressive and we are all extremely happy for him.”
Should Mailata win the Super Bowl, he’d become just the second Aussie alongside Eagles teammate and punter Arryn Siposs, should he return from injury, to achieve the feat after Jesse Williams did so with the Seattle Seahawks in 2013, although he did not play in the game.
For the 25-year-old, it’s a journey he scarcely could have imagined when he first walked through the doors in Redfern back in 2016, but he now stands on the verge of greatness.
Perhaps ‘Madge’s brutal home truth all those years ago was the best thing that could have ever happened to him.
