A ‘shock’ phone call and Vegas sacrifice: Inside Tom Jenkins’ ‘crazy’ rise to NRL history

It’s one of the most incredible pieces of NRL history — and it almost never happened, were it not for one phone call.

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Tom Jenkins and Jack Cogger were catching up at Union St. Pastry, a little bakery in Wickham, for a goodbye coffee. Cogger’s shout, as always.

“He’ll never shout, Milky,” the Panthers utility laughed.

The pair had made the move to the Hunter at the end of the 2023 season, after Penrith’s third-straight premiership.

Cogger played a pivotal role in that grand final win, while Jenkins was part of the 22-man squad. But for both of them, the path to regular minutes in first grade was blocked.

At Newcastle, it was a different story.

The halves picture was murky, while Dom Young’s departure left a vacant spot on the wing.

For Cogger, the move largely ended up paying off. The same can’t be said for Jenkins. In fact, he played just five games under coach Adam O’Brien before requesting an early release.

He didn’t have anything lined up. He didn’t even know if he would play in the NRL again.

Jenkins just wanted a change. A fresh start.

Instead of finding something new, Jenkins went back to where it all started. But only after that one phone call.

It was Cogger’s parting gift for Jenkins, along with shouting him that coffee.

“Why don’t you just give Iv a call?” Cogger suggested.

Jenkins had already contacted Penrith twice at that point through longtime manager Andrew Purcell and been told there was nothing there.

It was a nice idea, Jenkins thought at the time, but he was pretty confident what the answer would be on the other end of the line.

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“Oh yeah I might,” he told Cogger.

So, after they said their final goodbyes before Jenkins left Newcastle for good, Cogger tried once more and, just before he got into his car, yelled out one final reminder.

“Make sure you give Ivan a call,” he said.

The next day, Jenkins did just that. It went through to voicemail, but the following day Panthers coach Ivan Cleary rang him back and they met up for coffee.

He wasn’t able to offer a contract there and then. Jenkins never expected it. All he wanted was to know the door was still open — and it was.

“My idea of Iv was that he’s always been such a good, genuine guy,” Cogger said.

“He’s never going to burn his bridges and he’ll tell (it to) you straight. He just said (to Jenkins), ‘Go work on it and it’s good to know that you’re still keen to play footy’ and then Milky went back and worked hard.

“The rest is history.”

Literally.

Last week against the Dolphins, Jenkins became the first player in premiership history to score multiple tries in seven straight games while he has already equalled Penrith’s record for the most doubles in a season.

“He’s scoring tries for fun,” as Cogger put it.

Fun is the right word for it, because there is an ease and enjoyment to the way Jenkins is playing rugby league right now, snatching the ball out of the air as if it were an extension of his hands.

But it wasn’t always that way.

‘TOUGH CONVERSATIONS’ AT PENRITH... AND THE LAST STRAW AT KNIGHTS

Jenkins first joined the Panthers as a 19-year-old from the small country town of Boorowa and, truth be told, never saw himself leaving.

But it took a “few tough conversations” with Cleary for Jenkins to realise that there wasn’t a future for him in Penrith.

“I think that was one of the things that I look back on now and I’m grateful for in the sense of I probably as a young kid wasn’t ready to leave and I was happy to stay there on a s****y contract,” Jenkins said in a wide-ranging interview on the ‘Bloke in a Bar’ podcast last year.

“But he (Cleary) actually pulled me aside and said you need to take an opportunity if it comes and you need to leave.”

Jenkins didn’t take that advice at first. He was in talks with the Cowboys who were “super keen” and also had a brief meeting with the Bulldogs that didn’t lead to anything.

The North Queensland offer didn’t suit Jenkins anyway, because he felt he was just too young at the time to make such a big move. But there was some “miscommunication” and so when he next met with Cleary, the Panthers coach thought he had taken the deal.

When he found out Jenkins hadn’t, he delivered that same message again.

“I think he understood that I wasn’t going to leave but I needed to leave and sat me down and said you need to take the opportunity that comes because there isn’t one here for you next year, which was obviously devastating,” Jenkins said.

It wasn’t what Jenkins wanted to hear. But at the same time, it was exactly what he needed to hear and by the end of the 2023 season, he had signed a two-year deal with the Knights.

Jenkins didn’t even last one year.

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“It wasn’t a thing where Newcastle had done this to me and it’s their fault. It was a mutual thing on both ends,” he said.

Jenkins arrived at Newcastle with the expectation that he was going to take Young’s vacant spot on the wing. Instead, Enari Tuala — who Jenkins admitted is a “gun” — got the start.

“I’m sitting there going, ‘Well, what’s going on here?’. But in saying that, I can sit here and say I wasn’t making it impossible for him (Adam O’Brien) not to pick me so I look back at it and I was filthy at the time but it’s my own fault,” an honest Jenkins said.

“If you’re training good enough and showing them what you’ve got then they can’t leave you out of the side. It’s as simple as that.”

In saying that, obviously there was more at play for Jenkins to want out of his contract before his first year at Newcastle was even up.

While being the first to admit he “wasn’t performing” and had his “worst year” at the Knights, the 25-year-old also told Kemp that at times communication was lacking from then coach Adam O’Brien.

“I was probably used to Ivan being really open and transparent in if he’s going to make a decision he’ll just tell you. He’ll just walk up and he’ll get on the front foot,” Jenkins said.

“I love that about Ivan, I respect that so much about him, he’s a person who will just tell you first thing, ‘This is what I’m doing’ and it probably sucks but you know when it’s clear and I feel like I probably didn’t get that at Newcastle.

“I felt like we went into a team meeting and the team was named but I hadn’t been told and I just wasn’t in there but then I thought maybe a conversation comes post-meeting and it didn’t come.

“I can understand that Greg’s coming back in and Enari was killing it but I probably just would have loved the conversation.”

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That extended to Jenkins’ exit from the club, with the Panthers winger claiming there was no meeting with O’Brien or then football director Peter Parr after his release was granted.

In fact, he said most of his Newcastle teammates didn’t know he was leaving the club until an end-of-year presentation when departing players were announced.

Jenkins said it was a “surprise” no exit meeting with the club’s powerbrokers was held, although he added he could have done better to initiate the conversation himself.

“I don’t hold any demise or anything towards them or anything. They took a chance on me and it didn’t work out,” he added.

“It was simply one of those business things where it didn’t work out and we went in a different direction.”

The final straw for Jenkins came in the back-end of the season when one of Newcastle’s players went down injured ahead of a must-win game.

“I thought maybe it might be me (replacing him),” Jenkins said.

Instead, it ended up being someone else getting the call-up and at that point, Jenkins accepted a fresh start may be best for both parties.

“I hadn’t performed. I hadn’t lived up to expectations,” he said.

“So it was a conversation with my manager and I said I think I’m going to get a release.”

Speaking to foxsports.com.au, Cogger said he could sense Jenkins “wasn’t happy” at Newcastle.

“And that was probably reflecting in his footy as well,” Cogger added.

“He’d probably be the first to say he wasn’t in the greatest form when he was up there for a number of reasons.”

Jenkins said leaving Newcastle was a “massive weight” off his shoulders and with hindsight, it’s easy to say it was the right decision too. But at the time?

“Was it the right decision to jeopardise and probably end my whole NRL career? Maybe not,” Jenkins admitted.

“But I just looked at it as, ‘If I’m going come back and I’m going to play NRL, it’s how I want to do it and I’ll go about it my way’… don’t get me wrong, it was one of those things where it could have gone so wrong.”

After all, when Jenkins sat down with his partner, parents and close mates to tell them he was leaving Newcastle, the natural next question was where he was off to.

“I couldn’t even give them an answer,” he said.

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A ‘SHOCK’ PHONE CALL... AND THE START OF THE COMEBACK TRAIL

Instead, Jenkins told them he was finished with the NRL for now. He was going to “live a normal life” doing something. He wasn’t quite sure what it was yet.

But whatever it was, he just needed to enjoy life again and then, if that happened, maybe he would give footy another crack again.

“It sounds so selfish,” Jenkins said.

“I’m going to give up this contract and this opportunity that so many kids strive for and don’t reach but I just found at the time if I’d stayed there I was simply just going to play another s**t year of footy, I didn’t want to be there, I wasn’t motivated and at the end of the day I just thought if I’m ever going to have another crack at it then I’ve got to do it a different way.”

So, he reached out to good friend Aden Perry, who was driving on the M4 when he got the call.

“I was a bit shocked by it,” Perry, who has known Jenkins since 2023, told foxsports.com.au.

“But I just said to him, ‘I’ve got you. I’ll support you through anything.”

That included offering him a job at Our Choice Disability, the disability service provider which he founded.

Jenkins had already been volunteering with Our Choice during his time at the Knights, driving down at Newcastle every week to get involved.

“He just loved it,” Perry said, adding that Jenkins still helps out now despite being a full-time first-grader with the Panthers.

“Even the other day when they played (against the Bulldogs on Thursday), he worked Friday and Saturday. He doesn’t miss anytime he gets a day off. He works without getting paid.

“He’s just an incredible human being and his dedication to working with kids with disabilities is next level. I’ve never seen anything like it.”

Now, while a return to the NRL wasn’t on his radar at that point, Jenkins still wanted to play some form of rugby league.

“He could have landed anywhere really,” St Marys Football manager Adam Przybyla told foxsports.com.au.

“He could have landed at a Newcastle club or returned back home and played some footy in the bush.”

Instead, Jenkins began the summer training with St Marys in the Ron Massey Cup, which is the tier below reserve grade.

Przybyla knew of Jenkins before he linked up with St Marys. The Panthers winger was close friends with a lot of the players and was frequently at the games on weekends supporting them.

The same remains true to this day, with Jenkins still finding the time to come to every game when it doesn’t conflict with his NRL schedule.

Jenkins first contacted Przybyla about the possibility of playing for St Marys around three quarters into the 2024 season and was told to get back in touch at the end of the year.

Jenkins did just that, telling Przybyla he was having a meeting with the Knights about a potential release and then five days later he called Przybyla back to tell him it was all done.

“He just wanted to come back here and fall in love with playing the game again,” Przybyla said.

Jenkins wasn’t the first and he certainly won’t be the last NRL player to go back to Ron Massey Cup in a bid to rediscover their love for the game.

Luke Sommerton played Sydney Shield for a few weeks in 2022, while Soni Luke came back to St Marys to give it one more shot before earning a full-time deal. Even former NRL players Michael Jennings and Bryce Cartwright played for the club last year, while Christian Crichton was named Player of the Year in Ron Massey Cup earlier this month.

“It’s a credit to the players and the environment and culture we have here, they just come back here and feel a really strong part of it,” Przybyla said.

“They know how connected it all is and want to be a part of it.”

Jenkins could have just as easily tried to get a run with a NSW Cup squad if that was the case. He had a few teams interested too.

But Penrith was home, even if it meant playing in Ron Massey Cup. He knew the system and, most importantly, he trusted the coach.

“I think Ivan played a massive part in how he is,” Perry said.

“He has got so much respect for Ivan and he wouldn’t want to be coached by anyone else.”

Still, the NRL was the furthest thing from Jenkins’ mind at that point. He just wanted to have a “bit of a reset” year and sure, if an opportunity at the NRL presented itself, he wasn’t going to turn it down.

But for the time being, he was playing for the Saints. Jenkins even posed for headshots.

The club never ended up using them.

A VEGAS SACRIFICE, PRE-SEASON STATEMENT AND IVAN ‘INSANITY’

Jenkins only had a few training sessions with St Marys before he got a phone call from then Panthers reserve grade coach and now attack coach Ben Harden.

Jenkins was supposed to be doing one of the most dreaded sessions at St Marys training, which involves running up and down the field for four minutes before a four-minute rest and then you do it again, four times.

The Panthers winger compared it to “torture”. But he was saved by the bell.

It was Harden on the other line. He’d heard Jenkins was back in town and wanted to see if he was interested in training in the afternoons with the NSW Cup team.

A few of the St Marys boys were already doing it and so Jenkins trained with the Cup side until Christmas, while also helping out the assistant coach with some of the Jersey Flegg kids.

“He’s just got so much experience,” Perry said of Jenkins.

“He knew the structure. He knew the system so well. He was teaching the other boys in pre-season about the system. Obviously, it was my first time training there as well in Cup and he was just telling me everything about the system.

“It’s so different to other clubs. Because he had so much experience in the Cup side and there was a lot of new faces, he just looked like an NRL player and then his fitness was next level, he was winning all the tests.”

“He went back there and trained the house down and was probably the fittest guy,” added Ivan Cleary.

After Christmas, some of the St Marys boys had returned to Ron Massey training. Jenkins figured he’d be doing the same. Instead, he earned a permanent spot with the Cup squad.

“I think doing a Cup preseason was better for me than doing a grade preseason because it just ended up pushing me so much more… I just wanted to win everything and I wanted to prove and show that I was a player that can still play at a high level,” Jenkins said.

He’d done enough in the pre-season to push for a spot in the trials but the first game came around and there was nothing. Same for the second.

But ahead of the third trial against Manly, Jenkins got his chance. The problem? He’d already booked a flight months in advance for the NRL’s Vegas extravaganza.

“I was like if this is my chance and I’m not going to give it up for Vegas,” Jenkins said.

“When I was younger I took a chance to party rather than to take a cool opportunity in my career. I look back now and I go maybe that was the reason why I’ve done that to learn to never do it again.”

Jenkins then signed a development deal two days before the trial and, as Cogger would say, “the rest is history”.

He started the season in NSW Cup before having to once again postpone celebrations when another opportunity came knocking, this time in the NRL.

It was the day before his birthday and Jenkins was planning to have a “big one” with his mates in the city, but Harden got wind of it and warned him against it.

Not long after Jenkins got the phone call from Cleary, who watched his Cup game on the weekend and told him he may be needed in the NRL that weekend against the Storm.

Jenkins was supposed to play in the centres but then Dylan Edwards’ back-up Daine Laurie went down injured mid-week, and suddenly he was needed at fullback.

“My dream is coming true but this is also a nightmare,” Jenkins said.

But at the same time, Jenkins said he was never sitting there thinking he was going to fail or seeing it as anything but an opportunity and again, that came back to who his coach was.

“Everyone’s saying Jenkins won’t play fullback, he won’t play fullback… and then it ends up coming out I’m going to play there and people are just going, ‘This is insanity. He’s never played there’, which in a sense it was… but not one part of me felt like I wasn’t supposed to be there because that’s how good Iv is,” Jenkins said.

“He will give you full confidence that, ‘I’m not going to put you here unless I fully back you to be here’.”

Jenkins went on to play 20 more NRL games last season before being dropped for the finals series. Even entering this year, there was no guarantee he would be back in first grade.

Ivan Cleary admitted as much himself after Penrith’s win over Parramatta.

“No it wasn’t (a given Jenkins would start this year). Honestly, I was just thinking in the pre-season it’s good to have competition. We had a trial against the Tigers and I was really happy how he went that night,” Cleary said.

“I probably couldn’t have forecast the year he had last year. Although there were some good signs, he genuinely left a lot of money on the table (at the Knights). He just wanted to be happy. He had no guarantees at our club.”

All he was guaranteed was a chance. A chance to prove himself again. A chance to be happy again.

It’s all Jenkins needed.

Jenkins enters Sunday’s game against the Knights as one of the competition’s in-form wingers and on a historic try-scoring run.

Even in his Newcastle days, Cogger knew he had it in him.

“His confidence level is through the roof,” Cogger said.

“He’s always had the talent and ability. You’ve got to take different journeys to find it. Obviously this is an environment where he thrives and feels comfortable and it looks like he is growing each and every week.”

“It’s crazy. I’m so proud of him,” added Perry.

“I’m so proud to call him my best mate. It’s a bit annoying when you just want to go and hang out with him and he has to take 500 photos with everyone.

“But he does it with a smile on his face. He’s a good dude and he deserves all the success.”

Premiership-winning Sharks hooker Michael Ennis, meanwhile, said there is a “great lesson” in Jenkins’ unlikely rise.

“Sometimes you can think, ‘Well, I’m just not going to get a look-in, this is not for me’ and they venture off and find reasons why they can’t. He found reasons why he could,” Ennis said.

“He came back from Newcastle on a train-and-trial, put his head down and trained hard.

“They were a grand final side. The chances of him forcing his way into that were probably very minimal. But he just put his head down, trained hard, got all the smart parts of his game done right that became reliable and that a coach like Ivan probably appreciates and then all of a sudden you start to deliver what he delivers.”

Jenkins, who is off-contract at the end of the season, could soon be rewarded for that persistence too. So, does that mean he’ll finally return the favour to Cogger?

“You’d think so, but he hasn’t shouted me back yet,” Cogger laughed.

“If he gets the new deal, surely there’s a coffee in there for me.”

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