On any other day, Jason Taylor would be willing North Sydney to victory and doing anything he could to help the club out.
Not this Saturday though.
That’s when the man known as “JT” will make his debut with the Parramatta Eels as a coach in the NSWRL Premier League against the club he spent six largely successful years with.
In a further twist his opposite Gary Freeman will also be having his first official match in charge at that level against one of the clubs he played for.
Taylor admits he had “a bit of a chuckle” when the competition draw came out and he discovered his team’s initial hurdle.
It will be the first time that Taylor has opposed the Bears since he played with them.
Despite coaching Parramatta’s SG Ball side in 2002 and 2003 they were never drawn to play Norths.
“It feels strange coming up against them,” Taylor said of the match at Cabramatta Sports Ground.
“It will be even more surreal when we turn up at North Sydney Oval for the return game in mid-April.”
His bond with the red and black is still extremely strong. He didn’t mind admitting they were his “second favourite club”.
He is the highest pointscorer in North Sydney’s 97-year history with 1274 points and was also their last first grade captain in 1999.
He represented NSW with Norths and won the Rothman’s Medallist in 1996.
Despite being on Parramatta’s coaching staff, Taylor still lives at Northbridge and remains good friends with many of his team-mates from the Bears teams of the mid-late 1990s – a set of players that went so agonisingly close to breaking the club’s renowned premiership drought.
Taylor even made an appearance at the emergency “Save the Bears” rally that was held at North Sydney Oval last October and regards the club’s demise from the elite level as “one of the saddest things that’s happened in rugby league over the last 10 years”.
One of his closest mates is Greg Florimo, the current Norths general manager with whom he once formed a robust scrumbase combination.
The pair has already been sharing a healthy rivalry over tomorrow’s game, with Florimo calling him on Monday morning to see if he was going to “stack” his side because the Eels’ NRL campaign doesn’t begin until the following week.
Taylor could have asked the same, now that Norths have access to Melbourne Storm reserves.
Because of the Bears’ new alliance with the Victorians, Taylor is acutely aware they will be a much tougher proposition than the one that got stuck with last year’s wooden spoon.
The other reason he is wary is the influence of Gary Freeman, with whom he had many battles on the field.