{"id":797611,"date":"2026-07-13T13:29:18","date_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:29:18","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/797611\/"},"modified":"2026-07-13T13:29:18","modified_gmt":"2026-07-13T13:29:18","slug":"nrl-naidoc-week-2026-top-10-greatest-indigenous-players-named-johnathan-thurston-beats-greg-inglis-tamika-upton-top-woman","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/797611\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL NAIDOC Week 2026: Top 10 greatest Indigenous players named; Johnathan Thurston beats Greg Inglis; Tamika Upton top woman"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"<\/p>\n

\u00a0 <\/p>\n

Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following content may contain descriptions, images and\/or voices of deceased persons.<\/p>\n

The votes are in and the best Indigenous rugby league<\/a> players of the past 50 years have been named.<\/p>\n

Rugby league fans joined a panel of experts to vote for the top 10 Indigenous Australian players to celebrate 50 years of NAIDOC week.<\/p>\n

Respected NRL<\/a> historian and statistician David Middleton compiled lists of 40 men and 20 women from which to choose from, and the top 10 of each can now be revealed.<\/p>\n

Johnathan Thurston<\/a> tops the men\u2019s voting and Tamika Upton<\/a> tops the women\u2019s.<\/p>\n

Thurston narrowly beat out Greg Inglis<\/a> for the title, with the late great Arthur Beetson in third.<\/p>\n

Upton narrowly beat Lavina O\u2019Mealey to the women\u2019s gong.<\/p>\n

All up, a total of 1688 public votes were cast for the men\u2019s and 1299 public votes were cast for the women\u2019s.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m a little lost for words, really,\u201d Thurston said on Nine\u2019s 100% Footy on Monday night.<\/p>\n

\u201cGiven the calibre of players that have come before me \u2013 Lionel Morgan and Artie Beetson, who was the first Indigenous person to captain Australia in any sport \u2013 I\u2019m a little bit lost for words.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m extremely humbled and proud to be voted by the fans as the deadliest.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m starting to sweat now.\u201d<\/p>\n

He said he was \u201cextremely proud\u201d of his Indigenous heritage.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m very comfortable in my own skin,\u201d Thurston added.<\/p>\n

\u201cAnd I know that I\u2019ve got an opportunity to give back to the community as well \u2013 and that\u2019s what I do with the Johnathan Thurston Academy.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u00a0 Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander readers are warned that the following content may contain descriptions, images and\/or…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":797612,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-797611","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\/797611","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=797611"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/797611\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/797612"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=797611"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=797611"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=797611"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}