Payne Haas wants to win premierships and more State of Origin series to emulate his idol Glenn Lazarus and has added a key string to his bow to help achieve his goals.
As the 23-year-old prop prepares to go into camp with the Blues ahead of game two of the Origin series in Brisbane on June 21, it is with the Lazarus legacy embedded in his soul.
Haas’s fascination with Lazarus, who won five premierships with Canberra, Brisbane and Melbourne as well as five Origin series with NSW, started as a youth.
His father Gregor would show him videos of Lazarus in action and exhort his son to be like the front-rower widely regarded as the best of the modern era.
Brisbane front-rower Haas has only played all three games in one winning Origin series, in 2021, and said he wanted to be part of more victorious NSW sides like Lazarus in the 1990s.
Haas is running for a career-high 192m per game this year but has added offloading - a Lazarus trademark - to his arsenal.
In 13 NRL games this season Haas has unleashed 29 offloads, well ahead of the 21 he reached for the whole of 2022.
“Yeah, Lazo’ is the man. He is one of the greatest props of all time,” Haas said.
“It is hard to mimic what he did but I know how dominant he was.
“I feel like I have put an offload into my game and that is coming along for me this year. “
Haas backed his Blues to prevail in Brisbane, and then in Sydney in the decider, after losing game one 26-18 in Adelaide.
“We know how hard it is to win at Suncorp and Queensland is pretty red-hot at the moment but I can’t wait to take on that challenge,” he said.
“There was enough evidence in game one that we can get the job done. We lost the little moments in the last 10 minutes.”
Emulating former Broncos prop Lazarus was a topic when Haas attended Keebra Park High School on the Gold Coast.
“I used to speak with Payne a lot about Glenn Lazarus,” former Keebra Park coach Glen Campbell told AAP.
“Lazarus had a big body, a big engine and played big minutes just like Payne now.
“We had big boys but some of them could only play at their best for six minutes. Payne did it for the whole game.
“Payne could run for days. He once lined up in the 800 metres at a district carnival and won it. We’d never seen anything like it … a front-row forward beating specialist 800-metre runners.”
Campbell said Haas had a slick offload as a schoolboy.
“He has always had it in his game but he is so confident now that (Broncos coach) Kevvie Walters is obviously encouraging him to use it,” he said.
“It’s an area where he has taken his game to a new level.”
