How Melbourne's Jahrome Hughes went from journeyman fullback to Dally M winner

By Nick Campton, ABC

Analysis - Jahrome Hughes didn't need the Dally M medal to be the best player in the NRL this year, but it certainly helps.

The Dally Ms aren't always an easy thing to believe in and they can be even harder to set your compass by as you wade through rugby league history, trying to sort things out.

The voting body is made up of a select group of ex-players only we don't know which ones anymore because their names aren't made public anymore, which was supposed to increase the integrity of the votes somehow.

The new voting system, where a player can get six points in a single match, means a late-season run can overshadow a season of consistency, as we saw with Kalyn Ponga pipping Shaun Johnson last year.

It can make for howlers and those howlers last because hardware matters when it comes to these sorts of things.

Memories can fade, but medals don't and accolades like the Dally M are how we talk to each other about rugby league history across time, so getting it right matters.

Hughes was the unanimous pick heading into last night's award. Everybody interviewed on the green carpet at Randwick thought so.

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Nathan Cleary, whose head-to-head battle with Hughes is the best individual showdown the grand final has to offer, thought so. If anyone didn't think so they should have known better.

It was hairy for a second, with Hughes triumphing by a point over James Tedesco and requiring an absolute blinder in the final round to do so, but we got there.

The medal is around the right neck and Hughes is now enshrined in greatness forever.

It's an honour he has avoided mentioning in recent weeks and it seemed to overwhelm him as the night went on and it became more real.

The moment of emotion came when he watched Will Warbrick, Eli Katoa and Joseph Tapine perform a celebratory haka, tears in his eyes.

A powerful haka at the Dally M Awards ✊ pic.twitter.com/gCW9s9EQCP

— NRL (@NRL) October 2, 2024

This is one of the good ones, a fair and just celebration of a player who has been overlooked and underestimated so many times and ultimate recognition of one of the most unlikely paths to the game's highest individual honour as Hughes finished his transformation from journeyman fullback to apex playmaker.

Hughes' rugby league story begins in Queensland, where he spent years wandering through underage and lower-grade football.

He started on the Gold Coast, where he played Under 20's until he got one NRL game in 2013, before heading north to the Cowboys, where he eventually played another.

Even when the Storm snapped him up in 2017, success did not come quickly. He was a fullback in those days and Melbourne seemed to have an assembly line of custodians.

At one point, the club had Billy Slater, Ryan Papenhuyzen, Scott Drinkwater and Hughes all on the same roster, gunning for one spot in the team.

When Hughes did play he impressed and the pieces began to move. Slater retired at the end of 2018, Drinkwater won his job in the next pre-season only to be injured in the final trial and Hughes assumed the role.

He was good at it as well. All the weapons we see now from Hughes - his speed, his decisiveness, his fearlessness to attack a gap as soon as it appears or to barrel into defenders when it doesn't- were on show.

But when he didn't play, Papenhuyzen starred. Plus Brodie Croft wasn't really working at halfback and because Craig Bellamy is Craig Bellamy and he very rarely misses an opportunity, he got Hughes feeding the scrums a few weeks before the 2019 finals series began.

Bellamy has a history with such moves. There is a perception his sides play with an obsession of certainty and a fear of jagged edges, but he has never been afraid of taking a square peg and working on it until it fits into a round hole.

When there is more talent then he has room for, he makes room. Greg Inglis won a Clive Churchill medal and a five-eighth of the year award despite the number six jersey possibly being his fourth-best position.

Cameron Munster was a fullback during the years Slater lost to injury, until Slater got healthy again and Munster had to play somewhere, so he went into five-eighth as well and now he's one of the best of his era.

A year after taking up the seven, Hughes won a premiership with the Storm in his 29th game as a halfback but he wasn't a true halfback then, not really.

He was a good footballer though, fast and tough and smart and brave, the kind of player who could play anywhere and find a way to do a good job of it, and that was more than enough.

He could have performed well in that role that way for the rest of his career and reaped plenty of spoils from it.

But then was not now and that life was not enough, because Hughes has mastered the craft behind the game's most difficult position in the years since.

He was once a good footballer who could play in the halves and slowly he turned himself into what he is now, which is a great half.

Cronk arrived at the Storm as a true utility and player five-eighth, hooker and lock. He was not a halfback until he was and once he was he willed himself into being one of the best of all time.

Hughes has such a different skill set to Cronk but they both excelled at channelling their greatest attributes towards their transition.

It might be the only thing they had in common but it's also the only thing Melbourne really needed from them.

For Cronk, that was his iron will and relentless drive to succeed. The Storm is built on hard work, but Cronk's dedication to excellence was like nobody else's.

Through sheer dedication, he mastered the fabric of rugby league on a technical level, bending by that iron will into the shape he required for his team to win.

He forced himself to greatness because he could make it so.

Hughes's best assets are that speed and power, and that has always been the basis of his game, regardless of the position. In those early days he leant heavily on his running game and he was dangerous for it.

But eventually, he began to use his running to set up his ball distribution, and more and more time at halfback helped him process the game faster and faster until all his other skills were at the same level, like on a computer game when you turn the attributes up on create-a-player mode. The dials are just about maxed out.

His kicking game, especially his positional kicking, has improved out of sight. His versatility as a playmaker, like his ability to act as a first receiver, second receiver or sweep runner, makes him dangerous anywhere and everywhere.

He can hit holes as easily as he puts people in them, he can slice through the defence or straighten up and create the space for someone else to do it for him. He can take control of a game or win it with a lighter touch.

He runs that Storm right edge like it's the navy. Eli Katoa won second rower of the year on Wednesday night, in no small part due to his combination with Hughes, and he talks about his halfback like he's a coach on the field, which he pretty much is at this point.

It is only this year that the accolades have come for Hughes. He doesn't play State of Origin, which means he misses out on the shine afforded to that arena and despite playing some great football for New Zealand that's often not celebrated as much as it should be.

He is in Melbourne, but that's not an impediment to stardom. Munster, Papenhuyzen and Harry Grant are all proof of that.

But in conversations around the Storm's all-star spine, Hughes was often overshadowed behind Munster's daring, Papenhuyzen's dashing and Grant's scheming.

But now it is Hughes who stands tallest, Hughes who leads the way, Hughes who the Storm turn to the most. He does not crave the spotlight and he has never chafed at not receiving the same headlines, but the glory is upon him now because he has earned it many times over.

Over the past two seasons, when Papenhuyzen was cast into injury hell, when Munster and Grant grappled with the ravages of rep football and struggled for club consistency, it has been Hughes who bore the weight.

This year, he hit a new level entirely and the other three have all found something close to their best, which is why the Storm are back in the grand final.

If they beat Penrith on Sunday, Hughes will join Cronk and Cleary as the only halfbacks with multiple titles in the NRL era.

There might be other stars on the day, and Cleary still has a fair claim to being the best player in the world, but this year has belonged to Hughes.

He has been the man, the one, a king with headgear for a crown, the very best of this whole damn sport.

That would not have changed regardless of how things went on Wednesday night but now the truth reflects off that golden medal with a shine that lasts forever.

-ABC