He was playing reserve grade purely for pride and that’s not easy when you’re a 34-year-old who has ticked footy's three big boxes: NRL premiership; Origin win for NSW; played for the Kangaroos. The idea of retirement first hit him one Saturday morning as the team bus made its way to Newcastle. “What am I doing?” he thought to himself. If the voice in his head wasn’t telling him to give it away, the fans on the hill were. Give it up, Farah! You’re shit! “It was hard, mate,” Farah says. “Really hard. I don’t want to disrespect Norths because they are a great club … but it was embarrassing for me. You get there, you get heckled by the crowd. There's always a smart-arse and I’ve got thick skin. You don’t let it bother you too much. The hardest thing was that the only chance I would get to play NRL again was if Cookie was injured. Mentally, that was tough.”

Loading Replay Replay video Play video Play video When the match against Blacktown was finally over, one of the first people he saw when he came off the field was his girlfriend, Rina. “You’re over it, aren’t you?” she asked him. “Yep.” “I can tell. You didn’t want to be there.”

“I’m done.” Farah texted his long-time manager, Sam Ayoub: “I need to see you tomorrow.” Ayoub’s been around. He knew what was coming when he met with Farah the next day. “I can’t keep doing this,” Farah said. “It’s not fair on the Bears, it’s not fair on Souths, I’m done.” Now I’m back," he says. "Far out. Who’d have thought? Robbie Farah

Ayoub could sell ice to the Eskimos. Telling a player to keep playing on just a little longer was an easy sell. He calmed Farah down. Told him to hang in there. Cook was about to be named in Brad Fittler’s NSW side for the Origin opener and Farah was sure to be called up for Souths. “Play one more game, mate,” Ayoub told him. Farah played one more game. Good move. He played for Souths, against the Sharks, and was one of the stars of their victory. The next morning, his former Wests Tigers teammate Benji Marshall texted him: “Come home. We need a hooker.” Marshall spoke to coach Ivan Cleary, who liked the idea. Farah spoke to Cleary. Cleary spoke to his club while Farah and Ayoub spoke to Souths. Within weeks, the Tigers confirmed Farah would play out the rest of the season with the club he was pushed out of two years ago and, on Sunday against the Titans, he makes his return in black and gold at Leichhardt Oval, the same place where he debuted in 2003.

“Everything changed after that night we played Cronulla,” Farah says. “It made me want to finish on a better note. I didn’t want my career to just fizzle out. I would regret walking away. That’s no way for me to end my career. I’ve got a fair bit of pride. I’m glad Sammy talked me out of it. This opportunity wouldn’t have come up if he hadn’t.” Another round: Robbie Farah is interviewed on the Leichhardt Oval scoreboard following what was thought to be his final farewell. Credit:Adam Pengilly Farah tells me all of this earlier in the week over breakfast at About Life on Darling Street, Rozelle, right in the heart of Tiger Town. Before the food, we stand out on the street for a series of photographs. “Glad you’re on the bus, Robbie!” declares the butcher at Darling Street Meats, referring to Cleary’s well-worn metaphor from last year when local juniors James Tedesco, Aaron Woods and Mitchell Moses were weighing up offers to leave, which they did. After that, a white Nissan Pulsar full of twentysomething girls drives past.

“Yaaaay, Robbie!” the driver yells. “Welcome back Farah!” A rough-looking older man walking by thinks they are talking to him. “Thanks, girls!” he shouts back. Yes, the world is truly amazing. Outsider: Farah says people saw him as a Tiger in the wrong jersey. Credit:Dave Hunt “The reaction of the fans makes you feel special,” Farah says. “It’s great to be back but to see what it means to the punters and people on the street means a lot. Even when I was at Redfern, I felt like 'Robbie from the Tigers'. People saw me as a Tiger, not a Rabbitoh. It made me feel like I was an outsider.” The Tigers had made him feel like that in late 2016 when he was told by then-coach Jason Taylor he could expect to play out the rest of his $900,000-a-season contract in reserve grade.

The board backed Taylor and Farah eventually signed with Souths. Only a handful of matches into the next season and Taylor was gone, too. Farah doesn’t want to talk about the past and that’s understandable. All he will say is this: “I know within myself that I’m comfortable with how I’ve handled things in the past. I can’t change perception. I’m sure before going to Souths people might’ve been iffy about me going there. People who don’t know me form an opinion, but they wouldn’t know the truth. Whatever people think of me, it’s worse than it is.” What’s certain is that none of us thought we’d see Farah playing for the Tigers again, including the man himself. He named his new sports events company Two4Seven, in reference to the 247 matches he played for the club. “I’ll have to change the name,” he laughs. A trip with mates to the Super Bowl in San Francisco in early 2016 sparked his interest in setting up the company. He took a bunch of people to last Sunday night’s Origin match at ANZ.

A package is available in late September to take a private jet to Melbourne for the AFL grand final before flying back to Sydney for the NRL decider. The Tigers are long shots to be there but Farah will be doing all he can to make sure he isn’t on the private jet that weekend. Loading “It’s all warm and fuzzy now — but there’s a job to do,” he says. But let’s just stay with the warm and fuzzy for a moment. Let’s not underestimate the significance of him making his return and, at all places, Leichhardt Oval, the scene of his debut 15 years ago. What’s the line from the Cold Chisel song Flame Trees? We’ve shared some history, this town and I … Farah and Leichhardt have some history.

Like the Monday night game against the Cowboys when everything he touched turned to gold. What about the field goal out of dummy half to win the game against Newcastle in golden point? Then there’s the hat-trick of tries against Souths before a record crowd, with fans sitting on the roofs of surrounding houses. He will never forget the match in 2007, also against Souths, when he received a painkilling injection in his hip, only to realise as he walked out onto the field that the doctor had hit the nerve and his left leg was completely numb. He tried to kick for touch and the ball failed to dribble more than two metres. He’s done all of this with a bunch of his mates who he played lower and junior grades with sitting on a pocket of the hill at Leichhardt. “I always keep an eye out for them because I know they are going to be there,” he says. “There’ll be there on Sunday — on the cans.” God love 'em. There’s also the time at Leichhardt in the days after the 2005 grand final win over the Cowboys when the fans climbed out of the trees to celebrate with the newly crowned premiers, who were a bunch of misfits and older players nobody wanted, as well as abundantly talented young punks like Farah and Marshall.

“You win a premiership at the age of 21 and you think, ‘I’ll be playing another 10 years so I can win another two or three of these’,” he says. “You just think you’ll get another chance and then you realise how hard it is to win one.” Remembrance: Tigers' Benji Marshall stands in a minutes silence for Robbie Farah's mother. Credit:Steve Christo Perhaps Farah’s most vivid and emotional memory of Leichhardt was the day he wasn’t there. It was June 2012. The Tigers were playing the Roosters. Farah’s mum, Sonia, had bravely pushed back against the pancreatic cancer that was ravaging her but on that morning she finally let go. Farah decided not to play. He couldn't. After a minute’s silence, Marshall broke down in tears. So did winger Beau Ryan. As anyone there that day will recall, it was heartbreaking. “Benji was the first person I texted that morning,” Farah recalls. “All my best mates have been through that footy club. They become like a family. You share the memories on the field but you share in each others’ lives. You spend as much time with them as you do your brothers and sisters. I’ll never forget the support when Mum died. They were all there. Tigers people came to that funeral to support me.”