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.
