There was something fitting about the way Josh Papali’i’s rugby league career came to an end. It wasn’t with a premiership. It wasn’t with a finals campaign.
The Canberra Raiders had already been eliminated from finals contention, meaning their final game of the 2026 season was, in the grand scheme of things, a dead rubber. And yet, somehow, it felt like the perfect ending.
Papali’i’s final game was in Townsville against the Cowboys, and the Raiders sent their club legend out with a 50–30 victory.
In the 30th minute, the 34-year-old did what he had done countless times throughout his 16-year career: he put his head down, drove his legs and crashed over the line.
One final try. One final win. One final reminder of what made “Big Papa” so special. Papali’i retires as Canberra’s most-capped player, having spent his entire 16-year NRL career with the Raiders. But perhaps the most telling thing he said as he approached retirement was this:
“Everything has a perfect time for its conclusion and I think this is mine.”
That sounds remarkably similar to something we find in the Book of Ecclesiastes: “For everything there is a season, and a time for every matter under heaven.”
We tend to think a perfect ending means getting everything we wanted.
For a rugby league player, perhaps that means a premiership. For Papali’i, it might have meant another finals campaign with the club he has represented for almost half his life. But that wasn’t how his story ended.
Instead, his final season finished with Canberra sitting outside the finals. His final game was played away from home. And yet he still managed to score a try and walk away from the game with his team victorious.
Sometimes, the perfect ending isn’t the ending we would have written for ourselves. That is an important lesson not just for sport, but for life. Christianity doesn’t promise that every season will conclude according to our plans.
There will be seasons of success and seasons of disappointment, seasons when everything seems to be going our way and seasons when we are forced to accept that something has come to an end.
The challenge is learning to trust that our worth isn’t determined by how perfectly a particular season finishes. Papali’i’s legacy will also continue long after his final carry. As Raiders hooker Tom Starling said before his farewell, nobody will replace Papali’i, but the players who remain can “carry on what he’s built.”
That, too, is something worth remembering. Our vocation isn’t ultimately about making ourselves indispensable.
It is about faithfully giving ourselves to the people and places entrusted to us, leaving them better than we found them and eventually having the humility to hand them on.
Papali’i said he always wanted to leave the Raiders jersey “in a better place” than when he received it. He certainly did. And perhaps that is why his final try was so fitting. He didn’t get the fairytale ending many would have wanted for him.
He got something better: the chance to finish his season doing what he had always done, surrounded by teammates, carrying the ball forward. Then, when the season was over, he walked away.
Every season has its time. And just like Papali’i, we need to trust God enough to recognise when ours has come to an end.
