{"id":762712,"date":"2026-06-27T01:08:23","date_gmt":"2026-06-27T01:08:23","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/762712\/"},"modified":"2026-06-27T01:08:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-27T01:08:23","slug":"nrl-coach-makes-heroic-rescue-put-loss-in-perspective","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/762712\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL coach makes heroic rescue put loss in perspective"},"content":{"rendered":"

The 2026 NRL<\/a> season has had no shortage of drama, but few nights have packed as much into a single night as Jason Ryles’ Thursday.<\/p>\n<\/p>\n

Hours before midnight, the Parramatta Eels<\/a> head coach was disappointed in his side’s 32-12 loss to the South Sydney Rabbitohs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Then, somewhere between the final siren and his drive home, Ryles found himself elbow-deep in a burning wreck on a dark stretch of highway, dragging a stranger to safety before the car went up in flames.<\/p>\n

Somewhere along Mount Ousley Road, a winding descent south of Wollongong that locals treat with respect even in daylight, something interrupted Ryles ‘ thoughts about Thursday’s loss.<\/p>\n

A car flipped on its side.<\/p>\n

“We were coming down Mount Ousley and turned off on to New Mount Pleasant Road, and there was a car on its side with smoke coming out of it,” Ryles recounted to The Sydney Morning Herald.<\/p>\n

He made a quick calculation that any parent would recognise.<\/p>\n

“As we got closer, I noticed there was a girl standing inside the car on its side. I thought to myself, ‘This could be trouble here,'” he explained.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I parked the car down the road so my kids couldn’t see what was happening, just in case [there was another person trapped].”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What he found when he approached was a young woman, inside the toppled vehicle, dazed but alive.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Another person had already stopped, armed with nothing more than a heroic drink bottle, the stranger smashed the rear window open.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Then Ryles, in his Eels polo, reached in.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“There was a guy already there. He smashed the back window with a Yeti [drink] bottle, then I grabbed the girl out of the car,” Ryles continued.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It happened pretty quickly. Three minutes later, the car was fully alight. The girl was fine.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“She would have been in her twenties and on her way home from work. She was just in shock.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

Ryles, to his credit, has shown no interest in inflating his role.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The 193-centimetre former prop was characteristically straightforward about the fear involved and generous to the other man at the scene.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I won’t lie, I s*** myself, and it was pretty scary,” the Eels coach revealed.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“But you do what anyone else would do and see if you can help. Before you know it, you’ve got your head in a car.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“The other fella did most of the work. He cut his hand. I was probably more suited to getting the girl out because of the size of me.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

They stayed until the fire brigade extinguished the blaze. Then the police arrived.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The footy game, which Ryles had been mentally re-litigating for the better part of an hour, suddenly felt very far away.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“It absolutely squared me up,” Ryles reflected.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“I went from thinking about a footy game to me thinking, \u2018If we didn’t get here in time, this girl could have been in all sorts of trouble’.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

“We waited around for the fire to get put out, then the police came over and talked about the game. They gave me a bit of stick about what happened in the box.”<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

The Eels will train again, watch the tape, and try to solve what broke down against the Rabbitohs.<\/p>\n

\u00a0<\/p>\n

What it puts into perspective is that on one quiet stretch of road south of Sydney, with smoke rising and a young woman in shock, none of that mattered in the slightest.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The 2026 NRL season has had no shortage of drama, but few nights have packed as much into…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":616093,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-762712","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762712","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=762712"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/762712\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/616093"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=762712"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=762712"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=762712"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}