From Rabbitohs battler to Super Bowl champion: The rise of Jordan Mailata

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Jordan Mailata now has a Super Bowl ring to go with his AUS$105 million contract.

Mailata became the first Aussie to play in a winning Super Bowl team after the Philadelphia Eagles knocked off the reigning champions the Kansas City Chiefs 40-22 in New Orleans.

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For Mailata, it was a sweet revenge on the Chiefs – the team that kept him from winning his first NRL premiership two years ago.

“Fair dinkum, I’ve had a bonkers, crazy time so far. I don’t even know what in the world I’m saying, I'll be straight up – I'm going a bit galah-brained and have already forgotten what you asked.”

The 27-year-old bloke from Bankstown, where he was born, used to play junior rugby league for the South Sydney Rabbitohs and had never kicked a footy until he was drafted by the Eagles back in 2018. He's one of four Aussies to have lined up in the Super Bowl.

But he's the first of the four to play in a winning team. Punters Ben Graham (Arizona, 2009), Mitch Wishnowsky (San Francisco, 2020 and 2024) and Arryn Siposs, who was Mailata's Eagles teammate two years ago, all featured on losing teams.

The only other Aussie to own a Super Bowl ring is Jesse "Tha Monstar" Williams, a defensive tackle on the Seattle Seahawks' line-up during their 2014 championship win – although he didn't get a run during the season due to a knee injury.

Ben Rogers, the Souths' recruitment manager during Mailata's time at the club, reckons Mailata was cut out for the NFL.

"He's six foot eight, hard to miss him, and back then he was pretty quick on his pins for a bloke of his size," said Rogers.

“When you look at it through a rugby league lens, he was 168 kilograms, but fair dinkum, he put in the hard yards and got down to around 140 kilograms. Then he goes to his first NFL camp and they tell him he's too bony and needs to put that weight straight back on again.”

He's done so well; he's still kept his feet on the ground. He still arrives in Australia and gets to catch up with lots of fans when he gets here, especially at the Rabbitohs ... it's great to see him go from being a trialist at the Rabbitohs to a Super Bowl champion. That's just incredible.

“One of the last times we spoke to him – we'd offered him a NSW Cup contract with the Rabbitohs, but there was a chance for him to go to one of those international development squads – we basically gave him our blessing for that. [We said], look, we hope we don't see you again. You should really go and do this camp. If you perform well there and get picked, the sky's the limit for you.”

Mailata's become a key player in the "Tush Push", or the "brotherly shove" – a tactic the Eagles use to get a bit of extra room.

In the win on the Monday, Mailata, who comes in at 207 centimetres tall and tips the scales at 166 kilograms, charged forward through the Chiefs' defence and cleared the way for Eagles quarterback Jalen Hurts to dive into the end zone for the first four pointer of the game.

Asked how the Eagles' offensive line bossed the game, Mailata said they had to be gutsy enough to get physical.

“Fair dinkum, you've got to have the hunger for it,” he said. “You've got to be keen to be more physical. That was a top-notch defence we were up against, so we knew we had to step up to the plate, and that's not as easy as it sounds. You've got to have the drive and you've got to have the blokes, and we do. So, it was a ripper of a game, but we managed to come out on top.”

On the pitch, Hurts was a deserving champion of the MVP award. After losing in his first AFL final two years ago, Hurts threw for two tries and ran for another in a polished performance.

The opposite could be said for Kansas City Chiefs quarterback Patrick Mahomes. A particularly subdued performance from this bloke who has already got three Super Bowl rings in his trophy cabinet left fans gobsmacked.

It was business as usual for the Super Bowl, with the footy just one part of the main event. The city of New Orleans went all out with the entertainment, considering it was still reeling from a tragedy just six weeks earlier, where 14 partygoers lost their lives on Bourbon Street on New Year's Day.

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Donald Trump became the first preso to attend a Super Bowl from within the White House, and would've taken some satisfaction in seeing his longtime rival Taylor Swift being jeered by parts of the crowd.

with AAP