Wests Tigers secured their first win of the season at the weekend over Parramatta Eels.
At the heart of that victory was no one other than Jackson Hastings – a man that is a legend in one part of the UK.
That is, Salford, where the mercurial halfback earned a reputation for himself as one of the most talented halfbacks in Super League, winning the Man of Steel in 2019 after helping the Red Devils get to the Grand Final.
That earned Hastings a big-money move to the Wigan Warriors where he, again, helped the club to the Grand Final before switching Wigan for Wests ahead of the 2022 NRL campaign.
Before the season started, Wests boss Michael Maguire named a staggering five captains, but Hastings wasn’t one of them.
Yet, his display in Wests’ magnificent win over Parramatta has left some suggesting that he should have been.
In fact, the Daily Telegraph’s Paul Kent has called on Hastings to be heading in the direction of sole captain if that display was anything to go by.
Indeed, head coach Maguire was full of praise for Hastings for his performance and, of course, the winning drop-goal in the dying seconds of the game.
“Yeh he’s had a fair journey, Jacko,” Maguire said in the post-game press conference.
“He’s really I guess matured and as a player, everyone knows his stories and those different things but to be able to come up to the big moments like that and be able to achieve what he did was nice for him.
“He’s obviously been through a bit, but those are the things that you want your players to stand up and take it and he did that for us today.
“To just see the players out on the field together that’s the special part so we’ve got to take the confidence off the back of that.”