Greg Inglis ... could have been a Souths player instead of starting with Melbourne. Source: News Limited
Greg Inglis comes up against his former club Melbourne on Saturday night, but was he the ultimate case of the one that got away for Souths - before they finally got him in the end?
It is not commonly known, and talked about even less, that Souths Juniors officials first sighted Inglis as a skinny 14-year-old.
Each year, Souths' under 13s and 14s representative sides travel north to play matches against a combined Group 2 and Group 3 teams over the long weekend in June.
Playing on a nondescript field in Smithtown, a small town on the banks of the Macleay River, Inglis showed glimpses of the type of brilliance that will be there for all to see at ANZ Stadium on Saturday night.
Catch the Souths-Melbourne top-of-the-table showdown Live on Fox Sports 1HD 7.30pm (EST) on Saturday night
Juniors officials returned to Sydney and immediately told their senior counterparts to pursue him.
Some in the Rabbitohs family say the senior club didn't sign him because the tip had come from the juniors.
"The us-versus-them attitude was certainly at play back then," says one official from the time.
"If they hadn't discovered the player, the seniors didn't want to know about it."
Others from that time report the club was hamstrung to do anything, because it was on the verge of being re-admitted to the NRL in 2002 after two years in the wilderness and was financially crippled.
The issue remains a cloudy and touchy one among former South Sydney officials.
Either way, the following year, Inglis signed his first professional contract with the Melbourne Storm after spotting him at a junior carnival on the NSW North Coast.
Inglis won premierships and rep jumpers while playing for Melbourne, before the salary cap scandal forced him out. Souths did not let him slip through their fingers this time.
In the end, Souths got their man through another cascading chain of events, and has emerged as the best thing going for the foundation club as they chase their first title since 1971.
The serendipitous nature of the story leads us to this match, which has been unfairly lost and obscured by the hype around Sonny Bill Williams' clash against the Bulldogs.
Better still, the clash between Inglis and Storm fullback Billy Slater will now materialise.
Slater boarded a plane to Sydney with his teammates. He'd been in a moon boot earlier this week, resting a foot that he reported as being "stiff" after Monday's win over Wests Tigers. But he trained on Friday and was declared "100 per cent" certain to play.
Comparisons between players in the same position is dangerous at the best of times, but especially these two given the difference in their body shapes.
Yet, according to Fox Sports Stats, Inglis is faring better, as determined by their Player Stats Index which compares the attack, defence and errors of players in different positions.
While Slater leads his Queensland and Australian teammate in line-breaks, try assists and offloads, Inglis has unsurprisingly been lethal when running the ball.
He has smashed through 39 tackles, compared to Slater's 18 so far this season.
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