Jordan Rapana's convoluted journey to 150 NRL games has included multiple cross-code switches and time spent on the Gold Coast and in Japan around his efforts for the Raiders.
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But it's a cold night in Queanbeyan that lives long in the memory of ex Raiders skipper and former Blues coach Simon Woolford, when he knew the New Zealand flyer was destined for big things in the NRL.
"From the first training session, he went up and caught a couple of bombs and all the boys were like 'How long are we going to have this bloke?'," Woolford said.
"I was like 'Hopefully a few games'.
"A couple of kicks went up at training and he just leapt above and caught them. You could just tell he'd been in professional systems before, you could tell he was a couple of cuts above local league even though he hadn't played league for two or three years or whatever it was, you could tell he would slot back in pretty quickly."
It was 2013, five years on from Rapana's first incarnation as an NRL player, which ended after five matches for the Gold Coast Titans - the Raiders' opponent on Saturday night.
He had drifted back to rugby union and ended up training in Canberra with the Brumbies, but Rapana's NRL dreams were still smoldering.
After convincing Canberra coach David Furner to give him a crack, he was shipped off to the Blues to get back up to speed.
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"At the time they were looking to bring Jordan across from rugby union and get him into a local rugby league team, and get ready for NSW Cup," Woolford said.
"As it turned out the Raiders got a heap of injuries pretty quickly which drained their NSW Cup team, and he left, went up and played there and the rest is history."
The 31-year-old Rapana lays claim to one of the most unconventional pathways to the 150-game milestone.
For starters the gap between his fifth and sixth NRL games was a staggering six years, almost to the day, a remarkable statistic given he has scored 84 tries in his 149 matches at better than one every two games.
He's undergone a significant shift in body type over the past 13 years, but is still as lethal as ever when it comes to scoring in the corner.
"When I debuted at Titans I was 82kg, so I was 20 kg lighter than what I am now," Rapana said.
"Wingers are no longer fast guys that score tries. There still are teams that have wingers that are like that, but the majority are pretty much your second forwards, getting your team on the front foot, taking those tough yardage runs so the forwards can have a rest.
"I've evolved, my weight's got a lot heavier, probably have lost a little bit of speed to what I used to be.
"I feel as though I've changed my game to try and adapt to being that second forward and helping those forwards take those tough carries."
Underpinning Rapana's NRL journey is a laid-back attitude that helped him re-integrate into the Raiders last year after a short stint in Japanese rugby.
He's been known to play golf before running out onto an NRL field the same day, and is capable of capping a low-scoring round with a multiple-try performance.
"I'm just happy I've been enjoying my football, and staying relatively injury free throughout my time here in Canberra," Rapana said.
James Buckley
James is a Queanbeyan boy enjoying his second stint at the Canberra Times, more than eight years on from his first. In between he's traveled the world, and spent time covering sport in Sydney.
James is a Queanbeyan boy enjoying his second stint at the Canberra Times, more than eight years on from his first. In between he's traveled the world, and spent time covering sport in Sydney.
