This time last year Jai Arrow ran out for his final game. At the time it was merely the final game of 2025, an NRL season in which he had played every one of the Rabbitohs’ 25 matches. As most of South Sydney’s star players had sat injured, Arrow had led a ragtag band of young players through the year, giving so much he’d often end games in tears.
Arrow was crying again on Friday night. But so was everyone else. He led the Rabbitohs out one last time in the final round of the 2026 season. This time he couldn’t run, so he walked. And he couldn’t talk either, so he laughed and cried, two human reflexes he says are interchangeable as his motor neurone disease takes ever greater hold.
More than 40,000 people at Allianz Stadium were on their feet singing Stand By Me when Arrow emerged leading a melancholy troop of teammates as captain in his 100th game for South Sydney. Flanking his slow advance was a cardinal and myrtle corridor made up of club legends and former teammates flown in especially.
The NRL had changed its interchange rules to allow Arrow his centenary match. So the man stood, head bowed, in the centre, soaking it all up as You’ll Never Walk Alone, a song now synonymous with Arrow’s battle with the insidious disease, rang out: When you walk through a storm / hold your head up high / and don’t be afraid of the dark.
For Rabbitohs and Roosters fans this is usually the game of the year, a final round face-off where 118 years of blood feuding bubbles up and blisters for 80 minutes. But this was different. For starters, it was a Rabbitohs home game at the Roosters’ home ground, the beginning of a shared tenancy of Allianz Stadium commencing in 2027.
But mainly because, for those familiar with Arrow across his 10 years in the NRL, football has felt a little empty this year. He showed up at training on the first day of summer as his lovable larrikin self. On the first day of autumn, he was front and centre for the team photo, still a bit sore but ready to rumble for another season.
Given his heroics in 2025, a campaign of courage that won him South Sydney’s best and fairest, and also the Souths Cares award for his charity work, no one batted an eye when Arrow didn’t run out in round one. He was still at training every day and most nights he still doled out soup for the homeless from the Vinnies food vans.
In the first chill of winter, when the news of his MND diagnosis broke, it hit the NRL world hard. Arrow was one of the good guys, a warrior on the field and a wonderful human away from it. When he spoke it was off the cuff, free of cliche, always funny and honest. No one did more to make people laugh or welcome the lost into the fold.
At the press conference announcing his diagnosis, Arrow was already too far gone with symptoms and emotion to speak. Instead he sat, stunned and weeping, next to his Rabbitohs coach Wayne Bennett, as CEO Blake Solly read a statement where Arrow vowed to fight as long and hard as possible for wife Berina and one-year-old daughter Ayla.
The NRL and the wider sports world have fought with, and for him, ever since. For Jai July, athletes all over the world mimed the launching of arrows to defy MND and pay tribute to Arrow’s courage. Last month, Souths wiped every colour, crest and sponsor from their famous jersey to take the field wearing white shirts with one word: Arrow.
This week, Arrow told Triple M: “I know realistically that my daughter won’t be able to see her dad play again, but I have a choice to make sure that: one, I’m around, and two, I’m a good father to her and a good husband. I refuse to feel sorry for myself and I’ll never show any weakness. It’s not my personality. Don’t worry about me.”
South Sydney and the wider NRL have reminded a weary world what real men and true friends look like, just in time for Fathers Day, crying alongside Arrow, keeping his spirits up, and letting him know he’ll never be alone. “He needs us,” said Bennett simply, “but we need him too.”
When Jai retired in June, Souths’ season could’ve crumbled with the tragedy and futility of it all. Instead, teammate Sean Keppie vowed: “Everything we do now this year is for that man.” On Friday night, led by returning star Latrell Mitchell, the Rabbitohs beat their old enemies the Roosters 50-20 to win a home final and send a warning shot to the competition.
It was just a football game, two old tribes running around with thousands cheering. But the greatest applause was for a man, a teammate and a father, who didn’t play a minute but influenced every moment and inspired his old team to a famous victory. His illness is still an arrow to the heart, but something much bigger has taken flight.
