THE first thing that hits you are his eyebrows.
Back in 1990, Mal Meninga sported a pair that looked like he had borrowed them from the giant slug section at Taronga Zoo. The Australian captain stands in his number three shirt and listens to hooker Benny Elias telling him he has won an award. They are in a small dressing room beneath the stands at Stade Gilbert Brutus in Perpignan after the Kangaroos had beaten France 34-10 in the second Test.
Elias, uncle of Lebanon skipper Mitchell Moses, is wearing a French shirt - an absolute pearler by the way - and mumbles a few words. He then hands his captain a chunky, distinctive trophy with a wooden base and TV camera on top. Meninga is the winner of the 1990 BBC Sports Review of the Year overseas personality award.
This is before the programme changed to Sports Personality of the Year and in the days when a lioness was something that looked after the cubs. Meninga is suitably respectful. He says thankyou and adds: “I look forward to coming back to England towards the close of my career.”
Fast forward 32 years and he is back on these shores as coach of the Kangaroos. Given the sporadic and quite farcical nature of the international calendar it may well be his last here in that capacity. If you are under a certain age it’s hard to describe both the magnetism and showbiz awe that surrounded that green and gold shirt back in those days.
They played club sides then of course, and Cumbria too, and midweek games were lit up by these beings from another planet. An 18-year-old Brad Fittler first unleashing that sidestep on debut against Wakefield on a wet Wednesday night (were there any other at Belle Vue?). Cliff Lyons and Des Hasler competing to see if moustache or bouffant hairdo would catch your eye first.
And then there was the side saved for Tests and the big gun club sides like Wigan and Widnes. Andrew Ettingshausen, Laurie Daley, Paul Sironen, Ricky Stuart were superstars - but there was one bigger than them all. Meninga was a rapid, bear-like man with an arrestable hand-off - fitting for an ex-Queensland policeman. He was the ultimate centre.
Those qualities, even that singsong name, were tantalisingly exotic back then...if brute force can be so. It’s perhaps why he won that award and why that huge presence over here for the next few weeks is so vital to rugby league. Older terrestrial viewers will remember him as they still remember Ellery Hanley and Martin Offiah from that period.
Meninga turned full circle last week when he spoke intelligently about the tournament ahead. He respected the right of Pacific Island players to adopt their heritage shirt but crucially spoke of the importance of the games being on the BBC. Meninga’s team has no household names in this country but a clip of Josh Addo-Carr in full flight or James Tedesco ricocheting through the middle of the field will put younger eyes in the right direction.
Then there is Lattrell Mitchell, the closest in that shirt to Meninga, an almost effortless runner with a bullying fend and freaky capabilities. I’ll be taking my lad to watch the Kangaroos at St Helens when they take on Italy. It will be no game of sorts but under the lights and probable drizzling night sky the sight of those shirts and the NRL stars in them may leave an indent like like they did on his dad all those years ago.
These are the best rugby players of either code in the world right here in this small town. And the welcome for Meninga will be even warmer there after he threw a bomb under the fanbase when he played one mesmerising season for Saints in 1984-85. The Kangaroos are back - and so is big Mal. The eyebrows may be smaller but the personality is just as big.
