The moment that sealed it came in the 80th minute. With the Roosters clinging to a one-point lead and Newcastle swarming, James Tedesco cleaned up a bouncing ball in traffic and the premiership was safe. It was the last of a night’s worth of plays that earned him the Clive Churchill Medal: 385 metres from 35 runs, 14 tackle breaks, and 170 metres of kick returns that kept hauling his side out of trouble. The Roosters beat the Knights 19-18, their first title in seven years, and they came from 12-0 down to do it. It was a grand final in which, for the first time in premiership history, both teams were captained by fullbacks. Only one of them was the best player on the ground.

That medal was the one gap in Tedesco’s grand final record. It is also his third premiership, after 2018 and 2019, and the first he has won as captain. Even by his standards it has been a season for the ages. He scored a match-winning try in Origin One and now has 26 caps for New South Wales, second only to Brad Fittler’s 31 on the Blues’ all-time list.

The honours surrounding those numbers are extensive. Tedesco is the reigning Dally M Medallist from 2025, a Brad Fittler Medal winner as the club’s best player, and has led both New South Wales and Australia, including to a World Cup victory. He took the Roosters captaincy in 2021 when Jake Friend was forced into retirement, and was named Dally M Captain of the Year in his first season in the job. He has since led the club for six seasons through a heavy turnover of champions, which is the harder kind of leadership.

Then there are the comparisons that matter at this club. Anthony Minichiello is the Roosters’ all-time leading try-scorer with 139, won two premierships including the 2013 title as captain, and took out the Golden Boot in 2005. Tedesco sits second on the club’s try-scoring list, and the club itself noted he scored tries at a faster rate than Minichiello did across his first hundred games. Fittler arrived as a marquee signing in 1996, won the Rothmans Medal as the competition’s best player in 1997, and captained the Roosters to the 2002 premiership. Tedesco has already matched his individual honours and has two more premierships than Fittler won with the club.

The old Eastern Suburbs Immortals, Dally Messenger and Arthur Beetson, remain the benchmark from other eras and make any claim to the title a hard one. But on the modern ledger, the case for Tedesco is difficult to dispute. He has three premierships, a Clive Churchill Medal, a Dally M Medal, a captaincy that has delivered a title, and a place among the five best fullbacks the game has seen. At 33, he is still the player the Roosters ask to save their season, and he keeps doing it.