It's midsummer in Redfern, but you’d hardly believe it. A light but steady rain falls on the Rabbitohs’ old home ground, exactly the kind of weather for keeping it tight and barrelling up the middle of the ruck. The right kind of day for Issac Luke, then, even if the NRL season start is still a few weeks away.

At the Park Café, underneath the stands of Redfern Oval, the table numbers are profile-pic cut-outs of South Sydney players. There’s Luke’s head, number 19, sitting on the table while you wait on a long black and Souths’ star rake to arrive. The cup of coffee gets there first and, alas, the waiter clears the number, killing any potential chance at a gag, even if a minor one. Luke knows gags, and knows gags in cafes – at the end of last year, he pulled off a comic gem on former team-mate Ben Te’o after he uncovered the union convert’s tab at Harry’s. Posting it on Instagram, Luke noted that Te’o was earning a couple of million bucks in European rugby, but hadn’t settled his $100 breakfast bill before leaving Sydney. An amused Te’o told his sleuthing friend to lay off the carbs.

The episode draws a laugh out of Luke. “It was sort of, do I do it, or don’t?” he says of his social media mischief. “It went viral. I rang him and said, ‘Sorry man.’ But he laughed it off, even reposted it.

“My two front teeth” – Luke pauses, then proceeds to pop his top incisors, much like how your grandfather used to with his dentures. All those tackles, unsurprisingly, extract a hell of a dental toll. “I left ’em by the drinks out on the field once,” he continues. “And Ben got his hands on ’em. Took, like, ten pictures with all the boys holding ’em. So I had to get him back.”

The words are softly spoken, punctuated by smiles, ever-sheepish. There’s a distinctly chill aspect to the guy – he’s even drinking green tea. It’s not quite what you’d expect from the mayhem-raiser seen on NRL fields over the last eight seasons, but that’s the deal with Issac Luke. The sides of his personality and play often don’t match up: the self-described introverted child from Taranaki who has grown into a stalwart team-mate at one of Sydney’s glamour clubs, and swaps texts with Russell Crowe. Someone who doesn’t like the spotlight of the camera or the stage, yet will put himself front-and-centre of the Kiwi haka, or even throw himself into a theatre-sports event in Auckland ahead of the Nines. A family man who is quick, and proud, to make mention of his wife or his kids, yet also famously tried to break his cousin’s leg in a Test match.

Luke can see the opposing strands, even appreciate them. It’s fortunate, because his career to date has become defined by another grand contradiction: he is the champion who wasn’t there. As Souths was bringing an epochal end last October to its 43-year wander in the premiership wilderness, it had to weather the side drama of Luke’s absence from the decider. After being reported in the preliminary final against the Roosters for a lifting tackle on Sonny Bill Williams – a tackle which Williams himself described as a “nothing” play – Luke was suspended for the grand final, his own spotty disciplinary record not helping his case. Like so many other league no.9s, Luke had long looked up to Cameron Smith, but this wasn’t quite the way he had hoped to emulate the Melbourne Storm captain, who was kept out of the 2008 grand.

The hurt was obvious – in handing down the decision, even the judiciary chairman noted the harshness of the consequences. The feel-good tale of the Bunnies’ bounce-back – from out of the comp entirely in 2000-01 to playing for the title – now had its sad tinge, because Luke was one of the men who had contributed greatly to the club on its long road back. In a rather perverse turn, there was a chance that Luke wouldn’t be allowed onto the ground at the grand final at all, as per the normal rules for suspended players. The NRL, showing some heart, relented.

It’s a heady thought, to have worked for so long toward an ultimate goal, only to watch your mates and colleagues have to go on and achieve it without you. But for Luke, even with the swirl of emotions going on around him, there was only one way to respond that week. “At the time, it wasn’t really about me,” he says. “It was about our team and our club. I couldn’t take that away from them; we had trained that hard to get to that point.

“When it hit me was after GI scored the final try, and it just rained on me. I had my moments during the week – I trained right up until the last day. I had to show the boys my character was strong – I had my moments where I’d be driving home, it would pop into my head, as it does subconsciously.

“Saying that, when I got home, I had my wife Mickayela and my kids there, and they took me away from it. I sort of surrounded myself with the right people. I’ve got really good mates, and they sent their messages and phone calls. I wasn’t alone with it.

“When it hit me, yeah, it did. If we lost, it would’ve hurt more ... I don’t like pissing in my own pocket, but I walked into the judiciary as a winner, and I walked out as a winner. I got charged guilty, and I still won. Because I believed my team-mates would get us across the line.”

Luke’s efforts didn’t go unrecognised. In the aftermath, there was the two-step with the premiership ring – coach Michael Maguire pledged his to Luke, who received another one that Souths’ co-owner Crowe had made for him. In missing the game, Luke had become the emblem for the idea that the Rabbitohs’ victory was for something larger than just this group of players, which only became more evident during the celebrations in Redfern the days following.

“It’s like you say: it was a club that died, and we’re the resurgence of it,” Luke says. “We never knew if this day was going to happen, but it happened. Everybody has been part of the journey, from when it got taken down and brought back in, everybody played their part in us getting to the grand final. If you played and left in 2004, that same person had a role in us getting to the grand final.”

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Even after all the attention he gets these days, the shy kid is still in there. Issac Luke sees the same quality in the youngest of his three children, his daughter Ava (by contrast, sons Adaquix and Cruze are energetic and sporty). “Even now, I’ll just go and sit in the corner. If I have my headphones, I’ll sit by myself. If I’ve got my guitar, I’ll go sit by myself.

“I think I’ve gotten a lot better over the years in talking to my team-mates. It’s been a slow progress, but the more talkative I get, the more comfortable they’ll feel around me. I don’t want to feel stand-offish; that’s just how I was. I never left the house when I was young.”

Growing up in Hawera, in New Zealand’s dairy country, Luke recalls he didn’t get a pair of footy boots until he was 13. When he did finally leave the house, the going was tough in his town’s ganged-up streets – his nickname, Bully, owes to the scrapes and rumbles he found himself in daily. But his inclination toward solitary pursuits led him to pick up a guitar, and he also eventually learned to play piano. Interestingly, he did this all by ear; he doesn’t know how to read music. His preference is for what his father used to listen to, a staple diet of 1970s rock: The Eagles, Little River Band, Creedence Clearwater Revival, although thanks to his own kids, he can also play One Direction tunes. “I had a few mates that I used to jam with. They messaged me after I went on The Footy Show. They said, ‘You still got it, eh?’ It’s good to pick up the axe now and then.

“When I jump on the stereo, I’ll play old-school stuff. It’s something I was brought up on. My kids are into modern stuff, hip-hop. I’m like: what’s this music? But anything I can play guitar to, I’ll listen to.”

Another of Luke’s quirky obsessions is the Rubik’s Cube. His record for solving one is a little over a minute, which is a pretty nifty speed. Lest one thinks he spent too much time with the Rubik’s Cube in his younger days, the classic puzzle was something he picked up later. “We were on a flight over to England with the Kiwis. Sam Perrett knew how to do it. Me and Benji Marshall jumped on – yeah, can you show us? We used to time each other.”

Between all those chords and cubes, Luke has shown he has a mind for figuring things out. It has translated to the field, where the 27-year-old has rounded out his game over the last few seasons. When he first arrived in the NRL, debuting for Souths in 2007 and for New Zealand a year later, he was regarded mainly as an undersized-yet-fierce tackler who would often trip the line into grub territory. His reputation hit a low point during the 2011 Four Nations series, after a pair of attempted cannonball tackles on Australian forwards Sam Thaiday and David Shillington in separate games, then his admission that he tried to break the leg of England’s NZ-born half-back Rangi Chase. He had felt betrayed, he explained, that his cousin Chase had turned his back on his country, and you know how there’s always more passion when family is involved.

Luke was a classic case of youthful energy misdirected. Harnessing it became a priority of Maguire when he took over as coach of Souths in 2012, employing no shortage of tough love in bringing it about. But Madge would find that he had a willing listener – having become a father at quite a young age, Luke’s motivations in football were highly tangible since the moment he had arrived from Wellington. “I probably wouldn’t have gotten to where I am now if it wasn’t for my first son, Adaquix,” he says. “I was on my way back to New Zealand and got a call from my wife: ‘We’re going to have a son.’ My first intention was I have to go find money. So I came over here, not knowing what it was going to be like. It sort of kicked off from there, and I haven’t really looked back. There’s a few things I would like to change, but I’ve learned from those experiences.”

Luke is now established among the elite hookers in rugby league, mentioned in the same breath as names such as Smith and Farah. He is perhaps the best dummy half runner in the game, who finished among the league’s leading hookers in metres gained despite missing eight matches (in 2013, he was the top-rated hooker statistically in the comp). His playmaking ability has become crucial to Souths, and Maguire, among others, has told Luke that he sees the action the way a coach does.

“Playing hooker, peripheral vision is pretty important. I see everything – oh, better watch out for that one,” he says. “Anyone that’s played touch footy, fast play-the-balls, dodge the traffic – my older brother was dynamite at touch. I was a defender rather than an attacker, I used to play in the backs. When I came over to South Sydney, they said, ‘We’ll put you at hooker.’

“It’s just an instinct thing, trying to dodge as many people as you can. If you have to run straight, you have to run straight. It’s something that’s grown to become one of my strengths, my running game, and I hope I can hold onto it. I do love defending, and I try to hit as much as I can. But in the modern game, you can’t just hit any more. You have to be able to do a lot.

“All my life, I’ve had someone that’s bigger than me. All the big boys used to run in my direction. It was either me or them, you know. Sometimes I come off good, sometimes I wouldn’t.”

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One of the Burgesses wanders past – if you can pick out whether it’s George or Tom, well done to you. It’s a reassuring thought, knowing these hulks are on your side of the line. But it’s also a reminder of the Burgesses gone, as Sam now does his thing in English rugby and Luke has moved to Manly.

Issac Luke has styled himself as the fifth Burgess brother. “I call their mum my mum. ‘Hey mum.’ She’s awesome. Me and Sam clicked straight away as soon as he come over. He’s one of my brothers, and I always call him that. I always jump in on the photos. I’m the brother who went missing, like the orphan.”

So it has to be asked: who will be better at union, Sam or Sonny Bill? Luke is also close to Williams, having come through juniors at the Bulldogs with him, and is also technically family – his wife is a distant cousin of the code-hopping star. “I’m going to sit on the fence on that one,” Luke says. “Sonny adapted his game and became one of the best. I reckon Sam could do the same.”

Across the café, Greg Inglis holds court at a table of younger players, looking every bit the respected veteran who has just been handed the captaincy. Souths are presently faced with negotiating one of the trickier acts in sports – how do you follow up the dream year? – and the post-championship changes have already come, in the form of Sam Burgess leaving the line-up and club boss Shane Richardson heading to league HQ. Young star Kirisome Auva’a will be absent, suspended for his domestic violence offence, which landed Luke in social media trouble when he tweeted out support for his friend when the penalty was announced late last year. While championship teams strive to keep a good thing going, they often find themselves shaking things up for the sake of being in control of the change. And in that vein of thinking, Inglis will be the one to lead the Rabbitohs in their title defence.

More than a few cynical league observers noted it was an attempt to keep Inglis, who seems like the last of the NRL’s athletic marvels who hasn’t yet dabbled in another sport, in the fold by binding him to the club. Luke’s take was more straightforward: “It was going to be his time soon. He’s that kind of player, one with a lot of influence. The boys like to follow him, too ... He’s not big with his talking. He’ll point you in the right direction, but he leads with his actions. If you need someone run over, he’ll go out and run over someone.”

Luke himself will be counted upon as a leadership figure this season. Only a few hours after this interview, he’ll be on the plane to Auckland to lead the Bunnies’ team at the Nines, kind of the first step into this unfamiliar territory of Souths-as-premiers. For Luke, it’s also a happy return home – the theatre-sports event had fallen over, which was unfortunate, but the last time he was across the Tasman, it was exulting in the Kiwis’ Four Nations victory. Deprived of the grand final, the win against the Kangaroos last November was deeply gratifying for Luke, as was the manner in which the New Zealanders’ performance, highlighted by the breakout showing of Shaun Johnson, seized the attention of the rugby league world.

“He’s awesome,” Luke says of the Warriors’ star. “You couldn’t put anything on him. He’s got it all, awesome to play with. Especially when he comes out with the special plays. He reminds me of a young Benji. Saying that, Shaun’s got a long way to go, and he knows that himself. Anything he can add to his game, he’ll work hard on that.”

A few days later, in Auckland, Inglis and Johnson are presented as the NRL’s faces of the game for 2015. The Luke-led Rabbitohs win the Nines, exhibiting the kind of mentality you’d want to see from the reigning premiers. Maguire talks of taking the preseason event seriously, just because it’s there to be won. Having waited so long to lift a trophy, Souths weren’t going to be cavalier about the opportunity to get another one.

It’s another fundamental part of the premiership follow-up act: getting the rhetoric right. Don’t get too far ahead of each stage in the process, never sound self-satisfied, embrace the adversities that come with the status. Luke has it down pat: “We’ve got a massive target on our head. Like a few years ago, it was Melbourne and Manly. It was the Roosters last year. It’s something we’re going to have to take on board. We went to one level, we’re going to have to take it to another.”

The Rabbitohs present an interesting prospect. Even with their collection of established stars, the case can be made that their run through the finals was keyed by the lift of the younger tier of players such as Dylan Walker, Alex Johnston and Luke Keary. If that growth curve is still upward, it might be the factor that lines up the sides of the premiership puzzle cardinal and myrtle once again this postseason. Luke points to the circumstances in last year’s grand final, where his understudy, 21-year-old Api Koroisau, now of Penrith, stepped right into the breach. “Our leadership had a goal in their head, and everyone just rose to the occasion. Api had one week to get himself ready, and he did. He got himself ready for the biggest game of his life. Alex Johnston, Some Auva’a, Dylan Walker, they all rose to the occasion. I guess it’s: do we do that every week now?”

Another part of the follow-up act: it’s useful to invent some added motivation. If Souths need to come up with something, they need not look beyond their mate who missed out. Luke says he’s heard the question a lot, and had to think about it: after 43 years, would another win be just as memorable as last season’s? “They had a big gap between the time we had won it. Hopefully, the gap is not that big again.”

Was there talk within the team of winning this one for Luke? “Nah,” he smiles a little ruefully, maybe even carefully, remembering what’s happened before. “Hopefully I’m with them next time.”

- Jeff Centenera