James Gavet knows the numbers don't lie.
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The Knights front-row enforcer turns 30 this year, is coming into his eighth season in the NRL having churned through five clubs and has chalked up just 56 NRL games.
"Nothing to write home about, I know," Gavet says.
And yet here he is, quietly and unassumingly proud of himself for what he has managed to achieve with his career. Strange, right?
Well, it's not when you learn about his remarkable back story and the path he was on before rugby league turned his life around.
It's a story that includes growing up on the mean streets of Auckland and smoking marijuana for the first time in primary school .
Of having his first taste of alcohol when he was 12 and then craving it almost daily for virtually the next decade.
Of hanging out with gangs where, just to survive, you had no choice but to be tough.
But that wasn't the worst of it. The worst of it came in his late teens when Gavet was kicked out of home while still in school and in one desperate, seemingly hopeless moment, deciding that ending his life was his only escape from it all.
The jagged scars on his left wrist from a broken bottle a reminder of the depths of his despair and just how fortunate he is to still be here.
Ask Gavet where he would be now without rugby league and he hits you with a dose of brutal honesty.
"I could have been behind bars, I reckon … or a whole lot worse probably. I don't even want to think about it," he says.
"I was doing a lot of silly things when I was young. It was easy because everyone was doing it. There were bad influences and a lot of bad decisions made.
"Drugs and alcohol - it was a bit of everything. The mind is a powerful thing. It can be in a good and a bad way.
"There was depression there and a lot of disbelief and my self confidence was at an all-time low. My own headspace was my worst enemy."
Footy was his outlet and because he was good at it, ultimately his saviour.
After starring in the Warriors lower grades, he signed with the Bulldogs in 2012 but his issues with alcohol lingered. Injuries didn't help.
He was sacked by the Dogs after just one top-grade game for an alcohol-related incident and had stints at Wests Tigers, Brisbane and then back at the Warriors before linking with the Knights late last year.
Asked him if there was a turning point in his life, Gavet says it was a period of time rather than a moment.
"I just started to finally realise all the blessings I had," he said. "In my early 20's, it really hit home that I've got footy, I've got a son to think of now - there were still some bad habits there but they were slowly less and less.
"In Sydney, I started going to Hillsong and while I still wasn't perfect, I turned 180 and I was starting to head in the right direction. Anytime I went through a bad injury or life would throw me a curve ball, I'd dip into the old ways but slowly it starting numbing down a bit and it became less of a go to."
Remarkably, given what he has been through, Gavet says he is now in a position to be a role model.
"A lot of other boys my age have clocked up 250 NRL games and I haven't got to 60," he said.
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"But I can show others out there that it's never too late to be in the mix.
"I think I can prove to everyone if you just hang tough and believe in yourself, overcome yourself, your own fears, overcome all the uncontrollables like rupturing an ACL and the other surgeries I've had, you can bite that bullet and still come out the other end."
So why shouldn't he be proud?
"Yeah, I am to be honest. I don't know if anyone else is but me personally, I'm happy with where I'm at and proud of the fact I've come through it. It's miles away from what I could have been.
"I love it here at the Knights. My missus [Gabriela Adams-Gavet] has started a job and has met some friends and is playing basketball for the Hunters and making her own name which is good.
"She is a very happy woman and as you know, happy wife, happy life.
"I've washed my hands clean of the past. I've got a lovely wife and two beautiful kids. I'm living in a beautiful place and the boys here at the Knights are a fantastic bunch.
"We are about to win this competition so everything is good. Couldn't be better."
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