'Life couldn't be normal again': What it's like to go straight from school to the NRL

Wests Tigers have never been afraid to embrace the limitless possibilities of a teenage dream, and coach Benji Marshall knows it better than most.

Marshall had no hesitation in handing Heamasi Makasini his first-grade debut on the wing against Gold Coast on Saturday night, with the 18-year-old Newington College student joining a select band of players who played in the NRL while still at school.

"It's a big effort from him that he's got himself in this position, but I wouldn't throw anyone in there who wasn't ready for it," Marshall said.

"There's no pressure on him to do anything spectacular. We just want him to get the experience, enjoy his time, and do his job.

"I told him in the sheds at Canberra after the game (last week). I took him for experience (as 18th man), to see what it's like to prepare.

"I told him then, to give him time, to take the news in and not stress over it, so we had the weekend to think about it, to tell his family and all that, and get a good week of preparation in."

It's an exciting time for a club that trades on the luminous promise of youth more than most.

It's what got Marshall his start all those years ago — he was still at Keebra Park High when he first played for the Tigers back in 2003, so he knows exactly what Makasini is going through, as well as what awaits him this weekend.

"You don't want to overcomplicate his brain about what it is. He's played footy his whole life, and this is just another game of footy where you have to go out and do what you're good at," Marshall said.

"If you can do it at training and do it in the lower grades, you can do it here. I don't want to overstress (him) or make it any more nerve-wracking than it already is for the kid.

"But he'll handle it."

Makasini's debut, where he'll become the first NRL schoolboy since Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii in 2021, feels less a bolt from the blue and more like an unveiling.

The Campbelltown City junior is old enough to have four reserve grade games to his name — where he looked physically capable of matching it with grown men — and young enough that he asked the Tigers if his NRL debut could wait until he'd finished the First XV season at Newington.

He isn't quite living every rugby league person's young fantasy of being dragged off the playground to save his team's season, but such things aren't unknown to his contemporaries in the schoolboy prodigy club.

Brad Fittler was still at St Dominic's College in Penrith when he started two finals matches at five-eighth for Penrith as a 17-year-old in 1989, and later that year, Balmain's Tim Brasher, then of Grantham High, played for the Tigers in the grand final as an 18-year-old.

More recently, Wade Graham tells a great yarn about being at Hills Sports High when he debuted at 17 for Penrith, when he tried to go to school on the morning of the match, only to ring his mum to come pick him up after seeing himself on the back page of the newspaper.

Sometimes the books must be put down when the Steeden gets picked up.

Campbell Graham, who was still at Marcellin College Randwick at the time, was in the middle of studying for the HSC when he got the call-up for his first match for South Sydney in 2017.

Isaiya Katoa didn't play NRL until after he'd left Barker College, but did have to complete some of his own HSC by correspondence while he was playing for Tonga on the 2022 World Cup tour in England.

For Chris Lawrence, another Wests Tigers schoolboy star, walking into the exam hall at St Gregory's College Campbelltown after his own NRL debut was a stark reminder of how his entire life had changed.

"It was surreal. It was great to come back and see all my mates and the whole school be so happy, but I didn't look for or like the limelight, and I got thrown into it," Lawrence said.

"It was a shock to the system to have cameras follow you around. I had an HSC exam that day as well — it was English, and I had a shocker."

Lawrence played for Australia and recorded over 250 NRL appearances for the Tigers, retiring as one of the club's favourite sons with a highlight reel as long as Parramatta Road, but when people talk footy with him, his debut still comes up.

For all he achieved afterwards, such a brilliant start is impossible to ever fully leave behind.

At 17 years and 238 days old — which makes him the youngest player in club history to this day — Lawrence was a late inclusion on the wing against the high-flying Broncos at Lang Park late in the 2006 season.

He was so young he didn't have an NRL contract at the time, so the club put one together, but because he wasn't 18, his father had to come home from work to sign it for him.

"It was two or three days beforehand ,and Paul Whatuira went down, so Sheensy (Tim Sheens) looked up to me and said, 'Looks like you're playing, kid,'" Lawrence said.

"I was already going to be 18th man, just for the experience, but I never thought I was any chance.

"The gravity of it didn't really hit me until warm-up, when I could hear the crowd and everything.

"But Sheensy gave me a lot of confidence, he said, 'I picked you for a reason — because I trust your ability.'

"He told me that if I got the chance, to back that ability."

The chance came early. Brisbane knocked on around halfway and Dean Collis — Lawrence's centre partner and another man who'd made his NRL debut as a schoolboy while at Patrician Brothers, Fairfield, back in 2003 — collected the loose ball and found the rookie.

Shaun Berrigan, a Queensland and Australian representative who would win man of the match in the grand final a few weeks later, came across in cover.

But even on the edge of 17, Lawrence could fly like few others. Berrigan was left grasping at air as Lawrence gunned it for the line for a debut try right out of a fantasy.

"Those words from Sheensy were in my head, and instead of stepping inside and going for the conservative play, I took him on the outside and was fortunate to get around him," Lawrence said.

"That confidence Sheensy gave me is why I could do it."

The Tigers won, and Lawrence's try was the highlight, and it was just one moment of one game, but Lawrence would never be anonymous again.

Over the course of those 50 metres, his old life was gone forever. He left it behind, like he did Berrigan.

He broke out his study books on the flight home, and the cameras were there at St Greg's on the Monday when he did his exam, and the photographers followed him down to the McDonald's at Woodbine when he and his mates went there after school.

"I was in first grade for the next few weeks, and I learned a lot about how to manage those things like the media, the expectation, the pressure," Lawrence said.

"Overnight, I went from a nobody, a kid who played footy, to people recognising me in the street. I didn't know how to handle that."

It was a similar story for Jordan Rankin, the youngest of all the NRL's schoolboy players.

Rankin was just 16 and in year 11 at Palm Beach Currumbin when he got the call from Gold Coast coach John Cartwright late in the 2008 season telling him he would be playing for the Titans against the Knights in the big league.

He was fresh off leading the Australian Schoolboys to a 68-6 win over England in Townsville, where he scored two tries and kicked 10 goals, but Rankin literally didn't believe it.

"I got off the plane and had a heap of missed calls. I didn't even have Carty's number at the time, it was just a random number, so I didn't call it back," Rankin said.

"He rang me again. I answered and he congratulated me on the Schoolboys, but said I couldn't play the next Test because he wanted me to come into camp to play next week against Newcastle.

"I thought it was a prank. I said 'yeah, no worries mate', and hung up, and then Scott Clarke, the football manager, rang me because I don't think they thought I was actually going to get on the train back to the Gold Coast.

"My mum picked me up from Robina Station, (assistant coach) Steve Murphy picked me up in the morning, and took me to Runaway Bay for my first training session with the first grade team.

"I didn't know any of them. I'd watched them from afar because we trained at the same place, but I'd never met a first grader, so I got introduced to all the players, and it was a surreal moment."

Rankin would be 16 years and 238 days old when he took the field, making him the youngest player of the NRL era and the third youngest in Australian rugby league history.

Once word got out that the Titans would field the youngest first-grade player in 72 years, the hype became impossible to control.

Come the Monday of the game, Rankin tried to go to school as normal, but one of his school coaches took him home at recess to get away from it all.

He came on with 25 minutes to go, going head-to-head with Newcastle's Jarrod Mullen at the scrum base.

It was fitting, because Mullen was only a few years removed from making his own NRL debut while he was still at St Francis Xavier's College in Hamilton.

Back then, Mullen used to carry around a notebook filled with advice and plays he'd gleaned from Andrew Johns alongside his schoolbooks and was still just 21 himself, but that made him a grizzled veteran compared to Rankin.

The young Titan's first touch was an audacious chip and chase that nearly came off before he capped the game with a try assist for veteran forward Brad Meyers via a sharp grubber.

The Titans went down 32-12, but Rankin was the story. For some players, their first-grade debut is a blur, but Rankin can still recall every detail.

"I remember the pre-game talk, I remember the warm-up and seeing my friends and family and the rest of the Aussie Schoolboys in the crowd," Rankin said.

"I remember my first touch, I remember how much bigger and older they were than me, and trying to get into the game by making some tackles.

"I really enjoyed it, it was so fast, and everything everyone said it would be.

"It was an eye-opener, but it gave me a lot of confidence that I could play at that level."

The next day, Rankin was meant to represent his school in a touch footy competition. Playing was out the window, but he went along anyway to support his mates.

"There were cameras and everything there. It was an intimidating set-up because there was so much attention, and it was an interesting battle to try and get back to a normal life, but life couldn't really be normal again," Rankin said.

"It was all football, and trying to make it."

Rankin had stepped into a dream he'd had his whole life only to find the dream was his new life and that's a hell of a thing for anyone to carry, let alone a 16-year-old.

The next few years were hard for him. He didn't finish school until the end of the next season, and didn't play his second NRL game until 2011.

"At that age, you can be naive, you play one game, think 'how good is this', and you think you'll play the next week and it'll all just happen," Rankin said.

"But I wasn't ready for that game, physically, emotionally or football IQ-wise.

"They trusted a kid to do a job, and I was thankful for that, but I had to work hard over those next two years, playing under-20s to build my game and my confidence after not getting another crack.

"It took a lot of mental hurdles to get back to a place where I could be picked again.

"But without that, I wouldn't have the resilience that I've built over time, and that spurred me on to a playing career that lasted for 15 years."

Rankin eventually left the Titans before stints with Wests Tigers, Hull FC, Huddersfield, Castleford and Parramatta.

One season at the Eels, there was a coaching change in reserve grade midway through the season, and Rankin acted as an old-school captain-coach, playing the first half of games before coaching the second.

Seeing the young guys rise through the ranks around him, helping them to be better players and better men, and the pride that inspired, is what kept him at it once he retired.

He's currently leading the Eels under-21 side, where he's coaching boys who are four or five years older than he was when he was making his NRL debut.

Not all of them know how early he started, but all of them know their coach was a player once and understands what they're going through.

Their dreams are so big and they are so fearless because they are sure those dreams will come true and Rankin tries hard to teach them to slow down, that their time will come when it comes.

It's a lesson he learned the hard way after his debut, which he knows came too soon, and 17 years later, he still can't believe it happened the way it did, but he doesn't shy away from it either.

"I'm very proud of it, because I worked really hard to get there," Rankin said.

"I see the kids coming through now who want to reach their goals and play first grade at a really young age, and I try and give them one of the big lessons I learned — I was in a rush.

"It was always a rush to make the next rep side or the first grade team, and you have to try and take every moment and go on the journey.

"It'll make you a better player if you're patient, with all the lessons and ups and downs that come with that.

"I was that young kid once upon a time, and if I'd learnt those lessons, if I had someone helping me, maybe I could have done more with my career as a player.

"But instead I learned on the run."

Rankin's record will never be broken. Clubs can no longer select players under the age of 18 unless they get a special exemption from the NRL, like the Roosters did with Suaalii.

But there will be rare players like Makasini, who are tasked with a man's job when they're still half a boy, because sometimes there are players who are not called but chosen.

By the time the siren sounds on Saturday, everything will change for Makasini. The Tigers have big plans for him, and this game is just the start.

Rankin, a self-described footy obsessive who watches every game every week and lives in the film room, is confident he will do well.

"These days, I don't think kids are thrown into it anymore. There's a lot more discussion, a lot more process," Rankin said.

"Benji has seen a lot of good first-grade traits in him, and he's played 300-odd games; he knows what it takes.

"If he's ready, regardless of age, then he's ready, and I think that's a great stepping stone for the Tigers and their pathways, and for the kid himself and the hard work he's put in."

Lawrence has the same faith in Makasini and in Marshall to guide him both on Saturday and through whatever comes next.

As a proud Western Suburbs man, he's always keeping an eye on the next players coming through but when he saw Makasini at first-grade training earlier this year, he couldn't believe it was the same boy he'd seen play for the Magpies.

"I couldn't believe how big he'd gotten," Lawrence said.

"(Benji) will inspire him with confidence to play his game. Yes, it's a first-grade game, but keep doing what you do that's got you to this point, and you'll be alright.

"I'm sure he'll get an opportunity to show his skills and show what he's made of, and I think it'll be the start of a long and successful career.

"It's a good show of faith — the Tigers will give an opportunity and back a kid's ability. Benji's not afraid to show that faith."

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