In all, it makes for an athlete unlike anything the game has seen.
The butcher’s ambassador: How to fuel the Haas machine
It might just be rugby league’s most appropriate endorsement deal.
Haas is the official ambassador of Moey’s Butcher – voted Brisbane’s best in 2024 – at Springfield Lakes, and ploughs through a small mountain of red meat each week.
Payne Haas proves a handful for the Storm defence in round 27.Credit: Getty Images
“We’re honoured to be fuelling Payne,” owner Moey Altaaf Sharif says. “We’re all mad Broncos supporters and the amount of meat he gets through is probably close to $700 a fortnight, to give him the protein and fuel he needs to play the way he does. I’m so proud to be helping in any way.”
Haas’ partner, Leilani Mohenoa, shared the 25-year-old’s diet and nutrition breakdown with this masthead, with six game-day eggs, half-a-dozen shots of coffee each day and a fondness for “fancy cookies” the highlights.
Haas will go without food or water while observing Ramadan, regardless of his training or game-day commitments, and he made his NSW State of Origin debut while fasting during daylight hours in 2019.
Former Blues staffer Hayden Knowles can still recall a then-19-year-old Haas snoring during one midweek meditation session when the rookie’s early wake-ups to refuel caught up with him.
The Muslim holy month has also happened twice when Brisbane have played in Darwin in recent years. Not that you’d know it watching Haas perform in 35-degree heat and 70 to 80 per cent humidity, having fasted right up to kick-off.
His numbers in those games? An average of 55 minutes for 16 runs, 199 metres, 7.5 tackle busts and 26 tackles a game.
The genetics and athletics
Stories of Haas’ freakish engine and aerobic capacity were known in NRL circles long before he actually played at the top level. The impression he left at the Warriors when the club was trying to sign him as a 15-year-old still endures.
Only a few centimetres shorter than he is now, and only five kilos lighter than his current 119kg weight, Haas beat all but a few of Stephen Kearney’s first-grade squad in a series of fitness drills.
Payne Haas playing for Keebra Park High as a teenager.Credit: NRL Photos
The then-Warriors coach was unimpressed and sprayed his NRL stars accordingly. When retelling the story now, those same players finish with “well it was Payne Haas”.
That same motor has delivered regular wins in 1.2km time trials at the Broncos, and can be traced back through a schoolboy history that included numerous 800-metre wins and an Australian under-11s record for shot put. He pinched that one from former Test and Origin star Jamal Idris.
Haas has long put his stunning aerobic capacity down to endless kilometre-long laps of a hellish hill near his family’s Gold Coast home, and the watchful eye of his father, Gregor.
“Every morning and every afternoon, I’d be training, doing hills,” Haas said recently.
“My dad used to be a sprinter and a hurdler. He went to the Pan Pacific Games as a kid. So he used to train me hard. He also was in the military for a bit, so he was pretty [disciplined]. He would drop us off at random places 6km away and tell us to run home.
Payne Haas in full flight at training during grand final week.Credit: NRL Photos
“My dad used to say, ‘You don’t want to be a typical Polynesian and be all power, your fitness has to be No.1’.”
Through 25 years of high-performance management and now coaching roles in rugby league, Knowles has trained Origin stars, Penrith’s premiership winners and champions at the Knights, Eels and Roosters.
“I rate athletes like Jarryd Hayne, Timana Tahu and more recently guys like Marky Mark [Nawaqanitawase] as some of the best athletes I’ve coached,” Knowles says.
“But I believe Payne Haas is, overall, the best athlete I’ve worked with in 25 years.
“He takes the title for combining speed, power, endurance, mindset, physical and mental toughness all into one.”
A Madge made in heaven
For all of Haas’ god-given gifts and a talent-laden Broncos squad rival coaches would do terrible things to acquire, Michael Maguire prizes his giant front-rower’s mind above all else.
“The best athlete I’ve worked with in 25 years”: Payne Haas has impressed for a long time with his physical gifts.Credit: Steven Siewert
How could he not, considering Maguire’s own force of will? He shares a career-long bond with Adam Reynolds from their days at Souths and loves Reece Walsh’s understated footballing brain.
But Haas’ ability to set aside injury, fatigue and scarcely fathomable family dramas is what Maguire treasures most.
Haas’ dominance of Origin I this year with the best performance of his Blues career came after he trained for all of 15 minutes beforehand and played with a grade two quadriceps tear.
It also came with Maguire telling the Blues staff not to worry about his fitness 10 days earlier, just that “he’ll play for sure – you need him to win”.
Prop and coach approach the game the same way after all, and neither Maguire nor Haas have considered reducing his training loads in the name of long-term preservation.
“It’s bloody enjoyable to coach when you’ve got players that are pushing boundaries,” Maguire says.
“When you’ve been given the gift of a motor like Payne’s got, you let him go after the higher end of what he can do. His dedication to training rubs off on everyone.”
Pay dirt is when the Broncos’ goal-line defence ends the season of four-time premiers Penrith, with Haas the most desperate of all, having already done the most work.
In a season when he has battled that quad tear and a bulging disc in his back, claimed a fifth Dally M prop of the year award (in the past seven years) and taken his game to another level, Haas will on Sunday chase the premiership he is still yet to win.
In the eyes of Andrew Johns, Steve Roach, Glenn Lazarus and a cavalcade of modern-day icons, it’s just a matter of time before Haas pushes past Lazarus as the greatest prop since Arthur Beetson.
Haas dismisses the suggestion instantly because he has never won a title.
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“I feel like I’ve achieved everything individually and in rep teams,” Haas says, having recently watched grand final replays to study the performances of Lazarus, Paul Harragon and Shane Webcke when performing mattered most.
“The ring is the final thing I’m missing.”
But with his butcher’s ambassador role, astounding athleticism and eclectic heritage, Haas is already something the likes of which rugby league has never seen.
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