Once or twice a decade you see a young player you instinctively know will become of the greats of our game.
A few who readily come to mind in my 65 years of watching Rugby League include the St George “Immortals’ Reg Gasnier and Johnny Raper, cheeky St Helens livewire Alex Murphy, Castleford’s hard man Mal Reilly, Parramatta’s scheming Peter Sterling and, in more recent years, Benji Marshall and Billy Slater.
They may have been teenagers, but they played with a maturity that belied their youth.
I have since added Wests Tigers fullback James Tedesco.
He first showed his unique talents in the NRL National Youth Cup (Under-20s) in 2011.
But in the first senior match of the following year, just as he was about to set the world on fire, he suffered a season-ending injury to his left knee.
Two seasons later he suffered another season-ending injury, this time a broken kneecap.
Were we even going to see Tedesco fulfill his destiny?
Well, it seems that at last we have.
This season he has been a revelation. When he has been on the pitch, the Tigers have at times looked world-beaters. When he has been injured and watching from the sidelines, Wests have looked a very average side.
There was one final question to be answered.
Although he turned out for Italy in the 2013 World Cup (scoring a try in his debut, when the Italians beat Wales 32-16), he had still to be tested in the State of Origin cauldron.
Last week he got his chance.
And when we say tested … we mean just that.
The Queenslanders targeted him from the kick-off, seeing whether he would crumble under the pressure.
Whenever he had the ball in his hands three or four Maroons, usually big forwards, would come in for the kill.
Jonathan Thurston drew the ire of Tedesco’s NSW team-mates with a suspect tackle just before half-time that smashed his nose.
Tedesco will now require off-season surgery on his hooter.
“He hit me and it p—sed out blood straight away,” Tedesco explained.
The Blues’ medical staff spent most of the half-time break trying to stop the blood gushing from his nostrils.
“But before the match I knew I was going to cop it,” Tedesco admitted.
“Obviously being a debutant they’re going to pressure you with high balls … and elbows and knees.
“Woodsy [Wests an NSW teammate Aaron Woods] tipped me off about that.
“He knew that in every tackle they were going to try to niggle me a bit … in every tackle they sort of give you some. And a bit more for good measure!
“That’s part of Origin, I guess.”
His former Tigers captain Robbie Farah got a close-up view of the tactics.
“He took a real battering,” Farah said, in one of the supreme understatements of the supreme understatements of the Origin series.
“They thought he was going to be a threat.
“You could hear them dropping his name. You could see them roughing him up every time they tackled him.
“He busted his nose in the first half but he’s tough kid.
“I told him before the game he belonged in the Origin arena.
“He proved that with this performance.”
No one is quite sure just how many meters he ran against Queenslanders.
The statisticians have suggested figures, with a top of 260 metres.
Not bad in any encounter, let alone in an Origin tussle.
The world is now his oyster. “When I first made the Australian Schoolboys side I learned to have confidence in my own ability,” Tedesco explained.
“I always realized I had a bit of talent.
“I just needed the confidence to exploit it.”
Rest assured he will be exploiting it for some years to come.
Gasnier, Raper, Murphy et al. You can now add the names James Tedesco … broken nose and all!
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