By Wayne Heming
Matt Scott faced some feared rivals during his 16-season rugby league career, playing for the Cowboys, Queensland, and Australia.
If he wasn’t going toe-to-toe with fiery Kiwi prop Jared Waerea-Hargreaves or Blue’s enforcer, Paul Gallen, he was leading the hit-ups for North Queensland.
However, none of those battles proved as daunting as fighting back from a stroke towards the end of the 2019 season.
Like so many battles on the field, Scott emerged a winner when the result could so easily have been more serious, even fatal.
Scott captured rugby league’s ultimate prize -- an NRL premiership title in 2015.
However while for him it was the pinnacle of a magnificent career, no doubt his greatest victory was recovering from a stroke which, if he hadn’t been so young and so fit, could have claimed his life.
“I was planning to retire in 2019 anyway following a tough year with the injuries,” FOG# 155 said when we chatted recently.
“I copped a pretty bad head knock in a game against Newcastle.
“I’d had plenty of head knocks before, but this time I got whiplash.
“I’m pretty sure after talking to a few neurosurgeons that’s what caused the stroke.
“I woke up the next morning and was very ill and quite ill for months after.
“It was pretty scary, it was very scary in fact at the time and a big shock to my system.
“I was pretty lucky it was a small stroke, but it was in a very bad spot I was told.
“From being a professional athlete and quite young and fit I thought strokes were what old people had.
“It was difficult, it still is.
“I’m definitely not the way I used to be and can’t do things I used to do.”
Like most kids in remote Queensland, Scott, travelled hours on weekends to play his junior football for Longreach Tigers.
When he was offered a chance to attend St Brendan’s College at Yeppoon -- a school that had produced several NRL and representative players including Ben Hunt, Paul Bowman, Corey Oates and more recently Harry Grant -- he did not hesitate.
After being part of St Brendan’s Fraternity Shield success he attracted interest from a couple of NRL clubs, including Canberra but eventually opted to go to Townsville and quickly found himself playing for North Queensland’s NRL feeder club, Young Guns.
Origin glory for Queensland, an NRL maiden premiership with North Queensland, Dally M prop of the year and International Prop of the year, World Cup and Four Nations success, all came his way in a 268-game career for the Cowboys.
It’s no coincidence Queensland built its golden Origin streak between 2005 and 2013, winning eight straight series, on the shoulders of two humble front-rowers with similar work ethics.
Scott and Petero Civoniceva first played for Queensland in game one of the 2010 series.
They partnered up for three straight series wins, including Civoniceva’s 33rd and final Origin.
“Pet was greatly respected and one of the nicest most genuine blokes you could meet,” said Scott of his fellow Maroon front-rower.
“When you lined up with him, you felt safe, you felt confident. You knew he would do his job and you had to do yours.
“He was such a gentleman off the field and always had time for everyone.
“But he was a machine on the field. You knew he wouldn’t let you or the team down and I was lucky to start my Origin career with him.”
Scott had a very similar playing ethic to Petero and was also considered a great bloke like his mentor.
When it was suggested to Scott that he and Petero were both “imposters” as members of the “front-row club”, he laughed.
“I’m not sure what happened there.
“Maybe that’s why we worked so well together.
“I know there were a number of years where we’d get to an Origin series and we kept hearing about these new NSW forwards who were bigger, stronger, faster and tougher than us and they were going to bash us.
“They kept saying we were too old.
“We never had to say too much to each other.
Scott recalled a particular game of the 2011 Origin series when he and Petero copped it from the southern media.
“We were just about to run out for game one and Petero looked at me; when Petero gives you that look you know he is serious and means business.
“It was the best opening stint I ever played with another front-rower, we steamrolled the Blues.”
Long-serving Queensland chairman of selectors Gene Miles places Scott among the best props to pull on a Queensland jumper after the great Arthur Beetson set the tone in 1980.
“Scott and Shane Webcke would be the first two props I would pick every time,” said Miles who has a fair knowledge of what’s required under the jumper to play Origin.
Good friend and Cowboys director of Football, Peter Parr, had a long association with Scott and lauded his contribution to the club.
“In my opinion, Matt Scott ranks as the number one forward ever to don a Cowboys jersey,” Parr said after Scott called it quits in 2019.
“There is absolutely no doubt that at the peak of his powers, he was unrivalled at the best front rower in the world.
Scott never really entertained leaving the Cowboys although he had a few tempting offers.
The club can thank the influence former captain Paul Bowman had on Scott as a young man after he moved to Townsville for him being a one-club player.
“I had a great deal of respect for Paul Bowman. He was a St Brendan’s boy and captain of the Cowboys when I moved to the club.
“He was a great guy and a great player and seeing him retire as a one-club player was something special and something I wanted to do.
“I did get a tempting offer from Parramatta at one point and Newcastle towards the end which I pursued and considered.
Scott ranks the club’s 2015 grand final, in its 20th season in the NRL, as his career highlight.
“Premierships are just so hard to come by, unless, of course, you play for Penrith,” he laughed.
“It was the Cowboys’ 20th anniversary, I was so close to being in the 2005 grand final against the Tigers.
“I was 18th man, that was very hard to go through.
“We had a great group of blokes (2015) and to see what it meant to them, the club, to the region up here, was pretty special.”
Scott recounted those dramatic final moments of the epic 2015 grand final against the Broncos and the emotions of Thurston’s sideline pressure conversion to win the game which painfully shaved the outside upright.
Thurston had kicked so many pressure goals during his career, but his body language as the biggest kick of his career drifted wide was that of a shattered man.
“JT loved pressure, more than any other player I’ve ever seen,” said Scott recalling THAT kick,
“When he struck it, I thought it was going over.
“It was such an intense game, it was probably the hardest game I ever played in.
“I thought he’d do it, he’d nailed so many close games for is, but I also knew because of personality he would be devastated if he missed it.”
Scott, who was captain, pulled his teammates into a huddle and told them to quickly get around JT and pick him back up and reassure him we could still win.
“It probably didn’t mean too much but he came up with the match-winning play.”
As a kid growing up in the tiny Queensland township of Ilfracombe, near Longreach, Scott played rugby league at the weekends.
“To say it was a small town is a big understatement,” said Scott.
“It was a one pub, one shop town.
“My sister used to own the pub, the Well Shot Hotel, and when we went back a few times a few years from Townsville we gave the pub a decent workout.
While rugby league provided Scott with so many highlights, it also delivered him some personal tragedies with the recent deaths of his premiership coach, Paul Green, and former teammate Carl “Charlie” Webb.
“Paul’s death was just so unexpected,” said Scott who spent six seasons under Green’s coaching.
“It was so shocking in the manner that it happened.
“Greenie had such a huge impact on this club in a short period of time.
“It was such a devastating time and so sad for his family whom I’d got to know over time.
“Charlie Webb’s passing, the brave battle he put up, was just so dad.
“It puts things into perspective and it seems to have happened too often in the last few years, unfortunately.
“It makes you sit back and remember the good times, reminisce and catch up with friends.
“As men and footballers, we like to think we are tough and we like putting up this persona that nothing can hurt us.
“But as we’ve seen and continue to see, mental health is so important and being there for each other is very important.
“It’s a great message, checking in and staying in contact with people you know and love.”
Scott always enjoyed the physical challenge of getting over this rival but he respected anyone he came up against.
“I always went out to do my job for my teammates and my job was to try and bash people, that was simple for me, that’s what I was paid to do and if I did that well if gave my team a chance to win the game.”
It was obvious Scott loved the big occasions against the big names and in particular a few of the toughest in the business in Waerea-Hargreaves and Gallen.
“I like playing the big blokes who didn’t step,” laughed Scott.
“I loved the battles with Hargreaves, I had some great battles with him in the international arena.
“To see how many (NRL) games he’s done at the level he has done it as a front-rower is amazing.
“Over the years Paul Gallen was a guy who played such an important role for NSW in Origin.
“He was a big personality and he was always a good test because he was fit and strong and you knew he’d never stop or give up.”
Scott has three children, Hugo 10, Will 7, and Freya 4, who keeps him on the go.
“They keep me busy enough,” he laughed.
“But I’ve also got a construction company I started with my brother.
“We do a bit of work around western Queensland with some commercial and industrial construction.
“I still do a little bit of work for the Cowboys mentoring the club’s leadership group which includes Tom Dearden and Reuben Cotter, once a week which has been enjoyable.
“Tommy’s confidence and leadership have improved immensely and what you see is what you get with Rubes.
“The Cowboys are in very good hands.”