The 2026 NRL season has had no shortage of drama, but few nights have packed as much into a single night as Jason Ryles' Thursday.
Hours before midnight, the Parramatta Eels head coach was disappointed in his side's 32-12 loss to the South Sydney Rabbitohs.
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.
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.
A car flipped on its side.
"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.
He made a quick calculation that any parent would recognise.
"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.
"I parked the car down the road so my kids couldn't see what was happening, just in case [there was another person trapped]."
What he found when he approached was a young woman, inside the toppled vehicle, dazed but alive.
Another person had already stopped, armed with nothing more than a heroic drink bottle, the stranger smashed the rear window open.
Then Ryles, in his Eels polo, reached in.
"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.
"It happened pretty quickly. Three minutes later, the car was fully alight. The girl was fine.
"She would have been in her twenties and on her way home from work. She was just in shock."
Ryles, to his credit, has shown no interest in inflating his role.
The 193-centimetre former prop was characteristically straightforward about the fear involved and generous to the other man at the scene.
"I won't lie, I s*** myself, and it was pretty scary," the Eels coach revealed.
"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.
"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."
They stayed until the fire brigade extinguished the blaze. Then the police arrived.
The footy game, which Ryles had been mentally re-litigating for the better part of an hour, suddenly felt very far away.
"It absolutely squared me up," Ryles reflected.
"I went from thinking about a footy game to me thinking, ‘If we didn't get here in time, this girl could have been in all sorts of trouble'.
"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."
The Eels will train again, watch the tape, and try to solve what broke down against the Rabbitohs.
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.
