We watched all 211 of Alex Johnston’s NRL tries. These ones matter most

Source : ABC NEWS

All of Alex Johnston’s 211 career tries were worth four points, but some of them are more equal than others.

To find out which ones were most important on his journey to break the all-time record, we went on a treasure hunt.

Watching all of the South Sydney winger’s tries is a mighty undertaking — maybe 75 per cent are easy to find on YouTube and Kayo, but tracking them all down, especially some of the early years, is proof that the internet is a far less permanent place than we might think.

A supercut of the impending most prolific try scorer the game has ever known shouldn’t be so hard to find, given its historical value, but it’s stayed behind lock and key in the Channel Nine and Fox League archives, beyond the reach of the rugby league public.

But it is possible to cobble a facsimile together, as long as you know the right places to look.

After trawling forgotten highlight videos in the darkest corners of rugby league cyberspace, digging through a decade’s worth of replays and fan videos across social media just in case they had that one try that was missing and calling in a favour or two across back channels to round out the total, we have watched all 211 of Johnston’s tries since the very first he scored in his NRL debut in 2014.

After tallying where on the field Johnston crossed the line, the position and side of the field he was playing on, the distance he ran to score and whether he entered the in-goal after beating a defender or not we’ve picked out the five most important tries of Johnston’s long journey towards breaking Ken Irvine’s long-standing record, which could happen as soon as South Sydney’s match against the Roosters this Friday.

1. Try number eight — vs Parramatta, Round 19, 2014

Everyone knows Johnston has scored the majority of his tries on South Sydney’s left wing, but the scale of his success there is staggering when you add it all up.

All together, he’s scored 158 times in that position — which just on their own would make him the 11th most prolific try scorer in league history — but this was the first.

In the early days of his career, Johnston regularly switched between the left and the right flanks, even spending a season and a half as the latter in 2015-16.

There were also occasional forays to fullback, which became more than just occasional in 2018-19, when injuries forced Greg Inglis to move to centre and allowed Johnston to take over at the back.

It’s fitting that Inglis is involved — Johnston once portrayed a younger version of the talismanic fullback in an NRL commercial when he was 14. 

For a time, Johnston saw himself as a custodian — enough so that when the Rabbitohs signed Latrell Mitchell for 2020, Johnston was going to leave the club for a shot at the number one jersey elsewhere as salary cap pressures closed in.

But Johnston opted to take less money to stay and settled in on the left wing to the point it’s hard to remember those early days where he played anywhere else because they’re buried under a mountain of tries.

There have been many like this initial effort against Parra, where he cruises over untouched from close range after a delicious cut-out pass from Inglis, but there’s always something special about the first time.

2. Try number 43 — vs Wests Tigers, Round 14, 2016

A great finisher needs chances to finish, and Johnston has had the benefit of playing with many a classy playmaker in his day — there was Luke Keary in his early seasons, Adam Reynolds whenever Johnston got switched to the right side and Latrell Mitchell during the years where Johnston made his rapid ascent up the try scoring lists.

But no player has helped Johnston close in on 213 career tries as much as Cody Walker. 

The veteran five-eighth is one of the sharpest attacking players of his time, a player equally adept at ad-lib creativity and precision execution of well-drilled patterns.

Not only is he both the consummate natural and a well-honed tool borne of practise and experience, but he also knows how to be both things at once. There is no part of attacking rugby league he does not understand.

A marathon watch of all Johnston’s career tries doubles as a showcase of Walker’s brilliance and consistency — he played 20 games or more in each of his first nine NRL seasons, and the injury-riddled 2025 campaign is the first time in his career he’s had less than ten try assists in a year.

Like Cliff Lyons and Steve Menzies, or Billy Slater, Cameron Smith and Cooper Cronk, Walker and Johnston’s partnership has enhanced the other because a creator needs a finisher as much as a finisher needs a creator.

This try, which came in Walker’s rookie year, is unlike what was to come. The pieces still fit together, but not as we would come to know them. 

It’s on the right side of the field for starters and Walker is playing fullback, not five-eighth.

At the time, there was no way of knowing what Walker and Johnston were beginning when Walker slid on the outside of Tim Simona, drew in Josh Addo-Carr and flicked a sensational pass for Johnston to cruise over untouched.

Getting over without a hand being laid upon him has been a common feature of Johnston’s career — he’s crossed the line without beating a defender on 128 of his 211 tries, or just over 60 per cent — and no player contributed to that more over the years than Walker.

3. Try number 53 — vs Canterbury Bulldogs, Round 7, 2017

It wasn’t on the wing, and it came in the early stages of what turned into a dire 24-9 loss to the Bulldogs, but this effort is perhaps the very best of Johnston’s career.

He’s run further to score, most notably in a 2015 clash with the Roosters, where he combined with Inglis on a 107-metre show-stopper, and he’s gone over from long range plenty of times before.

All together, he’s covered a little over three kilometres with the ball in hand to score his tries.

Likewise, there have been plenty more important tries in the context of great South Sydney wins and seasons — like his opening score in the 2014 grand final win, for one, or his late try in the 2021 decider that gave the Rabbitohs a chance to level the scores late.

But purely on style points, this is hard to top. Johnston latches onto an offload from Sam Burgess near the halfway line, meanders across the field throwing dummies, picks a gap outside of Josh Reynolds, and explodes through it before beating Brett Morris to the corner.

So much of Johnston’s record comes from fine team play and his ability to be a well-tuned piece of a larger machine.

But this is true athletic excellence, a moment when a team game became an individual sport, and for all the tries that have come since, he’s yet to score a better one.

4. Try number 85 — vs Melbourne Storm, Round 3, 2020

Six years into his career, the chances of Johnston breaking the all-time try-scoring record seemed minuscule.

Given the scale of Irvine’s total and the thin margin for error, spending much of the prior two years at fullback — where Johnston played well but scored just 12 tries across the two campaigns combined — all but shut the door on chasing down the North Sydney legend.

Something drastic had to happen to change the course, and the set restart rule fit the bill.

Introduced by the NRL during the two-and-a-half-month COVID-19 break, the rule ramped up the pace of the game, changing the boundaries of attacking rugby league and altering Johnston’s career forever.

All the pieces — Cody Walker at five-eighth, Latrell Mitchell at fullback, Johnston on the left wing and a try-scoring bonanza across the league because of the new rule — were now in place, and the great advance was about to begin.

This try, off a sumptuous Mitchell cut-out pass, is Johnston’s first in the new world, his first that was assisted by the new Rabbitohs fullback, and the beginning of one of the great try-scoring runs the game has ever seen.

The great advance was upon us. Johnston scored 104 tries over the next four years, 103 of which came down the far-left channel of the field as the Rabbitohs became a finely honed attacking machine.

Watch them all together in quick succession, and before long, it feels like your mind is playing tricks on you because so many of them look so similar.

Johnston topped the try-scoring lists in 2020 for the first time since his rookie year, and the following season, with the NRL ramping up the set restarts even further, there were even more tries to be had.

That year’s Rabbitohs are the fourth most prolific attacking team of all time (four of the top six played in that broken madhouse of a season) and Johnston became just the third player ever, along with Dave Brown and Ray Preston, to cross for 30 tries or more in a season, doing so in just 22 games.

In 2022, even with the NRL rolling back the restart rule slightly, Johnston put up another 30. He’s the only man to hit the mark twice.

In these years, the Rabbitohs were a spear with Johnston at the tip and at their best, it’s remained that way ever since — he scored 66 of those 104 tries from 2020 to 2023 without a hand being laid upon him and 125 of the 127 tries he’s scored since the COVID shutdown came on the far left of the field.

By the start of the 2024 season, he was sitting pretty on 187 tries with Irvine’s record firmly in his sights.

Without the rule change, Johnston might still have been one of the most prolific players of his time but it’s doubtful he would have had a real run at top spot.

5. Try number 198 — vs New Zealand Warriors, 2025

After four years of try-scoring hedonism, the Rabbitohs have fallen back to earth over the past two seasons, and Johnston’s try-scoring rates have gone with them.

In that time, it’s been rare to see Mitchell and Walker on the field together, and the Rabbitohs attack has suffered accordingly.

Johnston’s own career seemed in the balance after a freak Achilles injury against the Raiders in 2024 wiped him out for the rest of the year.

That season, he managed eight tries, enough to surpass Billy Slater to move into second, but the seriousness of the injury and the fact he was off contract at the end of the following year put the chase in the balance.

The Rabbitohs’ attacking struggles continued through a difficult 2025 season, but Johnston’s return was a rare highlight.

He did not just resume the chase; he played well enough to score 15 tries in 16 matches and secure a new contract, all but ensuring the record would be his.

Of those 15 tries, his third of the year, a length of the field intercept effort against the Warriors — the first of three he would score that day in a 36-30 loss, with the third being his 200th career score — is the pick of the bunch.

Some of the old speed seemed to return for Johnston as he resumed his assault on the all-time mark, a battle he could finally win as soon as Friday night.