Of all the players at all the clubs in all of the rugby league world, none were less likely to do this than Kieran Foran.

The 300-game mark isn't the hard ceiling it used to be. Sports science, advanced recovery techniques and better load management means careers go longer than they once did.

When Foran debuted back in the ancient days of 2009, only 13 players in Australian rugby league history had cracked 300 games. Sixteen years later, as Foran leads out Gold Coast against St George Illawarra, he'll be the 53nd player to notch the milestone.

It's no longer the realm of just the impossibly durable and the totally ageless, your odds of making it to 300 games are better than they've ever been before but Foran making it is a defiance of every model of probability, the kind of long shot that would send a bookmaker broke.

For starters, there's the way Foran plays. Since the day he made his NRL debut with Manly back in 2009, Foran has always been too tough for his own good on the field in the best sense of the word.

That toughness has come through in many ways – when he was younger, especially in his first stint with the Sea Eagles, it manifested in a hard-scrabble running game and a fearless attitude to defence that seemed better suited to bull-riding or crocodile hunting.

Those are a younger man's weapons but even now, it's still best spotted in what he does with the footy.

On Sunday, as he's done his whole career, Foran will play straight and at the line, taking the ball right into the teeth of the defence even though he knows he'll get punished for it.

The Dragons forwards, most of whom are 10-odd years younger, close to 30kgs heavier and searching for the kind of frontier justice which only comes when a frustrated giant gets the chance to squash a skinny dude who just won't go away, will hit him and they'll hit him hard.

He might be used to it by now. Any YouTube compilation of big hits from the last 15 years is bound to feature Foran on the wrong side of at least a couple but he'll keep doing it until he day he retires. You can just about set your watch to it.

Some halves go their whole careers trying to play with such certainty and many never get there but Foran has always had it and he always will. Some might call it courage but Des Hasler, who has coached Foran three times across two different clubs, has referred to it as conviction.

It's a gift any half would want, and it made Foran a premiership-winner and, in his day, one of the best players in the league but he has paid a heavy price for it because it's not a style that's supposed to age well.

Once the invincibility of youth wore off, Foran went through a six-year period where he played less than 20 games in a season. In three years with Canterbury, he never got through more than 15 games.

His hamstrings were worst of all, but the rest of his body didn't miss out – shoulders, pecs, knees, they all played up at some time or another.

The fact he was even able to consider playing through such an injury toll though was something of a victory in itself though given Foran has said there was a time in his career when he didn't want to be alive, let alone be a footballer.

We're just enough removed from his year with Parramatta in 2016 that some fans might have forgotten how badly Foran's life collapsed around him. 

A serious shoulder problem, the first injury of his career, kicked off a downward spiral that Foran has compared to falling off a cliff. 

Personal problems and issues with alcohol and gambling were played out in incredibly public fashion in the media. In April of that year, he attempted suicide.

Rebuilding his mental health since then is the kind of achievement that makes things on the football field feel small by comparison.

Foran now speaks with great emotional intelligence and perspective on that hardest time of his life and for all his physical toughness it's his mental resilience that is most inspiring.

He rebuilt his life and eventually his career through stints with the Warriors and Bulldogs, seemingly slowing down as the injuries piled up but, like he has done so many times when he's taken the ball to the line and gotten smashed for his trouble, he just kept getting up.

The return to Manly and the reunification with Hasler and Cherry-Evans, where Foran played his best football in years to help lead Manly to a preliminary final, kicked off a career renaissance which is still going.

If he plays two of the Titans remaining three matches after this weekend, Foran will have appeared in 20 games or more for four consecutive seasons, which he hasn't done for a decade and his 13 try assists this season are the most he's had in a single campaign since 2013.

There's little speed left in Foran's game these days but he's smarter – he's made just two fewer linebreaks this year than he did in Manly's premiership year of 2011, when he was still very much a running five-eighth first and foremost, despite only running the ball around three times a game – and he makes the young, exciting Titans team better every time he plays.