From this point on, every game Jared Waerea-Hargreaves could be his last in the NRL but the Roosters veteran is already the last of his kind.

At 35, he's the oldest player in the league and he plays like it, not because he's decrepit or ineffective but because he was brought up in a rugby league world that doesn't exist anymore.

For 15 years and 314 games, Waerea-Hargreaves has been one of the NRL's hardest men, a player who understands that for front-rowers this is a game of intimidation and fear, of predators and prey, of blood and bones.

It is still possible to play that way, in a fashion. Penrith did so just last week as they steamrolled the Roosters in the first qualifying final, but the Waerea-Hargreaves' way is the old way.

He knows where the line is and he has never been afraid of crossing it. It has not endeared him to many opposition fans over the years but the Roosters would not have been as successful over the past 15 years without him.

Rugby league can be a game where ends justify the means and if you have to choose between winning games and popularity contests, pick the former every time.

On Saturday night, the Tricolours face Manly with their season on the line. Waerea-Hargreaves has played only once in the past 10 weeks due to a series of suspensions.

The walls are closing in and his kind cannot survive in this modern world. But his side still needs him because there is nobody else like him left. He is the last of the tribe, and his kind will never be seen again.

The beginning 

Waerea-Hargreaves has been doing this so long his origins almost feel lost to time. It is as if he has always been here, like he was born a grizzled veteran.

But there was a time when Waerea-Hargreaves was fresh-faced with a young fella's haircut. It's difficult to imagine a time before he got into the hurt business with the Roosters, but there was one.

He was a national champion golfer as a youth, even as he kept breaking clubs. Eventually he gave it up to play rugby union, signed with the Waratahs Academy and, in his own words, 'I used to bag league and say I would never play it.'

When he signed with the Sea Eagles for season 2008 he'd never played a game of league.

He took to it immediately, making his NRL debut within 18 months and his Test debut for New Zealand after just six first grade games.

Daly Cherry-Evans, who will lead Manly out against the Roosters on Thursday, was an Under 20s teammate of Waerea-Hargreaves back then and remembers the ferocity well.

"He was learning the game then but he was well and truly made for it. The shoulder charge was legal back then and I watched him almost kill people, geez he'd put some hits on," said Cherry-Evans.

"That's one of the reasons I loved playing with him. He was a fantastic teammate."

But there are plenty of angry young men who lift weights and get mean when they hit the football field.

Waerea-Hargreaves was not yet what he would become – as Cherry-Evans points out, that can't happen overnight.

"That aura comes over time, it comes with experience, it comes with your performances and the respect you earn from the opposition," Cherry-Evans said.

"He's built that over time. As much as we respect him, he's one of 17 players we need to look out for on Saturday but we'll give him the respect he deserves because he deserves it."

That journey began in earnest at the Roosters, who landed Waerea-Hargreaves for the 2010 season and it was one of those shoulder charges Cherry-Evans mentioned that best describes the all but vanished rugby league world that raised Waerea-Hargreaves

A dying breed 

The 2010 semi-final between the Roosters and Wests Tigers is, by any measure, one of the finest games ever played.

The seconds were ticking down and the Tricolours trailed by a point when Waerea-Hargreaves trucked it up gamely and ran into Simon Dwyer, who got him with the kind of hit that's so hard Waerea-Hargreaves might still feel it on cold winter mornings.

Waerea-Hargreaves dropped the ball, the Roosters somehow won the scrum and Braith Anasta kicked a field goal that sent the match into both extra time and rugby league folklore.

In the context of its time, the Dwyer shot attained instant legendary status. It makes for different viewing 14 years later, when education around head knocks and concussions is much more sophisticated.

In today's game, Dwyer would be instantly penalised and sin-binned, maybe even sent off. 

Waerea-Hargreaves would have been taken from the field immediately and wouldn't have played another minute that night or the following week.

In 2024, defenders cannot regularly launch themselves with the same abandon as Dwyer did on that night or as Waerea-Hargreaves, who has copped as much punishment as he's dished out, has so many times in the years since.

That's the key – Waerea-Hargreaves throws himself around like he doesn't care what happens next, to himself or anybody else. 

It makes him totally fearless and a player of iron will, but it's just not how this hardest of games is played anymore.

There are still plenty of hard men – the day rugby league no longer has need of toughness is the day it becomes a different sport entirely – and plenty of them still earn the ire of referees, the match-review committee or opposition fans.

But they are different because they have been raised in a different game. Their instincts are not the same. They have been trained in other ways as clubs adapt to the modern world.

Shoulder charges have been outlawed for over a decade and now any contact with the head, intentional or not, is punished severely.

Launching yourself into contact with no regard for your own safety or anybody else's isn't the way anymore and even the most ferocious hits must be controlled.

As time has gone on, Waerea-Hargreaves has struggled to find his place in that modern world — not with the quality of his play (he's broken more tackles this year than any season since 2017 and still holds the middle together defensively for the Roosters) but in a more existential fashion.

Just staying out there has become harder for him. Through the first 11 years of his NRL career, Waerea-Hargreaves was sent off once and sin-binned once.

In the past four seasons alone he's been sin-binned nine times, including three times in just 16 games this year.

Players like Waerea-Hargreaves cannot change. It is their blessing and their curse. 

It's not like he hasn't tried either — last year he conceded just eight penalties in 18 games, his lowest total since his first year as a Rooster back in 2010. 

But the edge he plays with and the way he plays with it, that willingness to truly do whatever it takes to establish dominance, is something players are born with and it cannot be simply turned on and off.

Having that edge, in the modern way or in Waerea-Hargreaves' arcane style, is a vital ingredient in any grand final charge which is precisely why the Roosters still need him and still rely on him so heavily after all this time.

They were dominated in the middle of the field against the Panthers last week and will need Waerea-Hargreaves at his best if they're to beat Manly.

No team has ever won a grand final without a couple of enforcers and even with the likes of Lindsay Collins, Spencer Leniu and Tyrell May on the roster, Waerea-Hargreaves still does that job for the Tricolours, even if it's in an arcane way.

They might not be able to win the premiership with him, but they certainly cannot win it without him.

The last of his kind 

Waerea-Hargreaves has been around long enough that most opinions of him are set in stone. 

Like the player himself, the way you feel about him is too old to change.

There are few players as reviled by opposition fans, but even fewer have as much respect among their opponents.

Other teams want what he provides and other forwards want to do as he does.

"He's relentless, he never shies away, he keeps going. He shows what forwards want, what teams want – the word is ruthless, no matter how the team is going," said Manly prop Taniela Paseka.

"He's one of the best props in the game and the fact he's still playing is insane. I'm only 26 and I'm starting to feel sore.

"He's been in the game for so long and he's such a professional but he's a target we have to try and get to.

"He creates a lot of their energy, so we have to give it to him, be aggressive with him. Whichever forward pack is more physical will win the game."

It's difficult to think of two players as different as Cherry-Evans and Waerea-Hargreaves – on the surface, all they share is a hyphenated surname and those years in the 20s at Manly.

But the veteran halfback does see something of himself in the old warhorse, even if they go about it differently.

"We have huge respect for each other, we play different positions but what he's been doing in the middle of the field for so long is fantastic," Cherry-Evans said.

"I have a lot of time for him, but on game day – as much as we respect each other, we do whatever it takes. We do that differently, but there's the same mindset there."

At the Roosters, Waerea-Hargreaves is beloved and revered like few others. He's the last man standing from the engine room of their 2013 premiership and the 2018 and 2019 grand finals were two of the best games of his career.

Once he moves on to Hull KR next season, there will be a void at the Roosters that will be hard to fill and not just in the front row.

They know the truth that many fans never see, which is that Waerea-Hargreaves has always been a different person off the field, which has always been clear to both friends and foes. Cherry-Evans doesn't hesitate to call him a gentleman.

Earlier this year, when Waerea-Hargreaves broke the club's all-time appearances record, the club produced a video asking several players to sum him up in one word.

There were all the ones you expect – tough, ferocious, and all that – but more than one of them said "caring."

He has been elder statesman and a leader for such a long time and players young and old still take inspiration from him, even a player as accomplished as Leniu, who plays with much of the same spirit but in a more modern way.

"He makes everyone feel ten feet tall when he's playing and he's itching to get back out there and repay us for what he did, it'll be good to have him back," Leniu said.

"It won't be his last (game)."

You can guarantee that on Saturday night, and in whatever matches may be to come, Waerea-Hargreaves will hold nothing back even if it risks having his NRL career ended early by suspension. 

He is not too old to keep fighting but he is too old to lose.

His teammates will follow him and some will bring a similar fire. 

The things that live in Waerea-Hargreaves also live in Leniu, who is a comparable style of enforcer just in a more modern way.

There are others across the league like Leniu, such as his ex-Penrith teammates James Fisher-Harris and Liam Martin, or Canberra's Joseph Tapine and Newcastle's Leo Thompson.

But even if they inherit the same hard man legacy, they don't do it like Waerea-Hargreaves. There is nobody left like him. 

He was forged by a game that doesn't exist anymore and never will again.