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• Top 6 Rugby League Players of All Time

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• Wally Lewis

  Wally Lewis, nicknamed "the King," played 31 State of Origin games for Queensland between 1980 and 1991 and captained the team in 30 of them, winning a record eight Man of the Match awards in the series that Queenslanders still regard as the format's golden era. He also played 33 international tests for Australia between 1981 and 1991 and captained the national team from 1984 to 1989, while collecting three Dally M Representative Player of the Year awards, in 1982, 1984, and 1988, plus the Dally M Five-Eighth of the Year award in 1988. Lewis's standing in Queensland rugby league was formalized after his retirement with a bronze statue erected at Lang Park, and the medal now awarded to the best player in each State of Origin series was renamed the Wally Lewis Medal in his honor. His combination of a record eight State of Origin Man of the Match awards and his sustained national team captaincy through the 1980s has made Lewis one of the most decorated and celebrated figures in Australian rugby league history.

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• Andrew Johns

  Andrew Johns captained the Newcastle Knights to both of the club's premierships, in 1997 and again in 2001, and he won the Dally M Medal as the NRL's best player three times — back-to-back in 1998 and 1999, then a third, unprecedented time in 2002. In 2012, Johns was named the eighth Immortal of Australian rugby league, the sport's highest individual honor, and the first Immortal selected specifically for his performances in the modern NRL era rather than the earlier competitions that shaped the game's first Immortals. Johns's later public disclosure of his struggles with bipolar disorder and substance use during his playing career added a candid, widely discussed dimension to his post-retirement public profile, contributing to broader conversations about mental health among professional rugby league players specifically. His combination of a third, unprecedented Dally M Medal in 2002 and his 2012 selection as an Immortal has made Johns the player most frequently cited by fellow professionals as the greatest halfback in the sport's history.

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• Billy Slater

  Billy Slater retired from the Melbourne Storm in 2018 with 190 career tries, the most in club history and the third-most in NRL premiership history behind only Ken Irvine and Alex Johnston, across 319 games that ranked third in Storm history behind teammates Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk. He won the Clive Churchill Medal as the best player in an NRL grand final twice, in 2009 and 2017, part of a career that included four grand final wins and five Dally M awards recognizing his individual excellence at fullback. His long-running partnership with Smith and Cronk formed the spine of one of the NRL's most sustained modern dynasties, with the trio playing together through most of Slater's 14-season career before all three retired within a few years of each other. Slater's combination of two Clive Churchill Medals and his club-record 190 tries has made him one of the most statistically decorated and widely admired fullbacks in NRL history.

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• Cameron Smith

  Cameron Smith broke the NRL's all-time games record during the 2017 finals series, passing Darren Lockyer's mark when he played his 356th first-grade match, and he became the first and only player to reach 400 career premiership games before retiring after his 430th and final game on Grand Final Day 2020. He captained the Melbourne Storm in every one of his more than 250 games as skipper since taking over the role in 2008, leading the club to three premierships across eight grand final appearances, including a title win in his own 19th and final top-grade season. Smith finished his career as the NRL's all-time leading point-scorer with 2,786 points, a record built from nearly two decades of goal-kicking and playmaking from the hooker position for the same club. His combination of the NRL's all-time games record and his status as the competition's all-time leading point-scorer has made Smith one of the most statistically dominant and durable players in the sport's history.

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• Johnathan Thurston

  Johnathan Thurston won the Dally M Medal, awarded to the National Rugby League's best player, a record four times, and his combination of exceptional kicking accuracy and creative playmaking made him one of the most complete five-eighths in the sport's modern history. His leadership of the North Queensland Cowboys to their first-ever premiership title in 2015, including kicking the match-winning field goal in extra time of the grand final, remains one of the most celebrated individual moments in recent rugby league history. Thurston's status as one of the most prominent Indigenous Australian athletes in rugby league made him a significant public figure well beyond his on-field achievements, and his advocacy work supporting Indigenous youth extended his influence into broader Australian social causes. His combination of a record four Dally M Medals and his historic 2015 premiership-winning performance has made Thurston one of the most statistically dominant and widely beloved individual players in modern rugby league history.

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More in Sports

• Robert Killian

  Robert Killian, a former U.S. Army Green Beret with more than 12 years of active service, won the Spartan Race World Championship in 2015 despite having just four races of OCR experience at the time, then won it again in 2019 for two career Spartan World titles. His path to obstacle racing ran through elite military and endurance competition rather than combat sports: he was a high school track star and collegiate runner who won the military division of the Ironman World Championship in Kona in 2009, was named Army Athlete of the Year in 2010, and won the grueling 68-hour Best Ranger Competition in 2016. At World's Toughest Mudder, Killian won the event three times and placed second overall (and first American) at the 2017 edition, completing 105 miles in 24 hours, one of the highest single-event distance totals recorded in the format's history. His combination of two Spartan World Championships and his background as a Best Ranger Competition champion and military Ironman world champion has made Killian one of the most distinctively credentialed competitors in obstacle course racing's history.

• Lindsay Webster

  Lindsay Webster won her first Spartan Race World Championship in 2017, then added titles in 2018, 2021, and 2022 — the 2022 win making her the first-ever four-time Spartan World Champion, male or female, at the time she achieved it. Along the way she set the sport's record for most consecutive Spartan wins with 17 in a row, and her 2021 title came alongside partner Ryan Atkins, who won the men's championship the same year in Abu Dhabi. Her combination of strong trail running speed and reliable execution on OCR's more technically demanding upper-body obstacles gave her a genuinely complete competitive profile that sustained her dominance across changing eras of the sport's growth. Her combination of a record four Spartan World Championships and her 17-race consecutive win streak has made Webster, by most accounts, the most decorated woman in obstacle course racing history.

• Hunter McIntyre

  Hunter McIntyre is a six-time obstacle course racing world champion by his own team's count, having first entered the sport almost by accident — he and a group of friends had loosely talked about doing a Spartan Race together, and he ended up the only one who actually finished it. He went on to become a three-time Hyrox World Champion as well, extending his competitive dominance into that separate hybrid fitness-racing discipline and becoming one of the few athletes to hold major titles in both OCR and Hyrox simultaneously. His path to elite athletic performance ran through bodybuilding and strength training before OCR, giving him a physical profile built for heavy carrying and climbing obstacles that distinguished him from more purely running-focused competitors, and his outspoken public persona helped introduce the sport to broader fitness audiences. His combination of six OCR world championships and his separate three-time Hyrox World Championship has made McIntyre one of the most recognizable and commercially significant figures across obstacle and hybrid fitness racing.

• Amelia Boone

  Amelia Boone, nicknamed "the Queen of Pain," won World's Toughest Mudder three times — in 2012, 2014, and 2015 — with her 2014 title coming just eight weeks after major knee surgery, a comeback timeline that became one of the defining stories of her career. She competed at an elite level while working full-time as a practicing corporate attorney, a combination that gave obstacle course racing a distinctive public profile well beyond its core competitive community during her prime. After shifting focus toward ultrarunning in 2016, Boone suffered a femoral stress fracture that put her on crutches for three months, then a cascading series of additional injuries — a sacral stress fracture, a fully displaced second metatarsal, and three separate heel stress fractures — totaling six bone stress injuries across three years. Her combination of three World's Toughest Mudder titles, including one won eight weeks post-surgery, and her later public account of recovering from six separate bone stress injuries has made Boone one of the most significant and candidly documented figures in obstacle racing's history.

• Ryan Atkins

  Ryan Atkins won the 2016 OCR World Championship in the 3km distance and later took the 2023 OCR World Championship Male 15K title, a span of major championships nearly a decade apart that reflects an unusually long competitive prime for the sport. He won the 2021 Spartan World Championship alongside partner Lindsay Webster, giving the Guelph, Ontario-based couple simultaneous titles in the same event and making them one of OCR's most publicly recognized competitive pairings before Webster went on to become the sport's most decorated woman. His background as a competitive adventure racer before focusing on obstacle course racing gave him a multi-discipline endurance foundation, and the OCR World Championships specifically returned to his home region of Collingwood, Ontario during his competitive prime, reflecting the sport's continued growth in the areas where its top athletes trained. His combination of OCR World Championships seven years apart and his 2021 Spartan World Championship alongside Lindsay Webster has made Atkins one of the most historically significant men's competitors in the sport.