Every Sunday morning, Max King would lead a secret double life. He would dress in some exercise clothes and carry a gym bag out the door. A couple of hours later, he would return home in the same outfit with the same bag.

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He was only 17. It went on for more than six months before King asked his parents to sit down.

“We thought, ‘oh geez, here we go. What’s this?’ You think he might be coming home to say, ‘I got arrested last night or I’ve been caught drink driving or something like that’,” King’s father David says.

It was far simpler than that.

Max wanted to confess to his parents he hadn’t been to the gym on Sunday morning for ages.

“I’m a Christian and I’ve actually been going to church,” he told them, taking them through the ruse where he would get changed in his car before the service and then redress in his fresh gym gear to return home.

King’s mother, Caroline, burst out crying.

“She was so proud of him,” David says. “We were surprised he would think we might be ashamed of him.”

The story of King’s devotion to a life dedicated to God won’t surprise anyone who knows NSW’s latest State of Origin representative, set to make his debut next Wednesday night at Suncorp Stadium, the fiercest rugby league cauldron on the planet.

He has openly admitted he abstained from having sex until he married his model wife, Christy Young. He met her at a church service and pokes fun at himself by inviting jokes about his batting average being comparable with Bradman.

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But while his faith is his north star, there’s more to one of the greatest examples of rugby league perseverance: the prankster, the unmatched family pedigree, the rugby league obsessive, the references to himself in the third person, the career-threatening injuries, three heart operations, the father who named his son because of the inspiration of an Uber Eats driver.

The Origin player.

“I’m so excited for him,” says Stephen Crichton, King’s NSW teammate and Bulldogs skipper. “He’s a man of God. He walks with his faith in everything he does and the way he represents God on the biggest stage is special.”

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Maxwell David King fell into his faith almost by accident.

Born in Huddersfield while David was playing out the final years of his career in the United Kingdom, Max and his older brother, Oliver, developed broad English accents.

By the time the family moved back to the Hunter in NSW, King was enrolled in a local primary school. Other students couldn’t understand half of what the seven-year-old was trying to say at school, and started mocking the new English kid.

Caroline didn’t want a bar of it.

“I’m not having my kids teased at school,” she told David.

The alternative was to send the boys to a Christian school, which would come at considerably more expense. David eventually relented.

By the time he reached secondary school, Max had started to take the religious component of his education more seriously, while juggling his rugby league pursuits in Catholic teams alongside the likes of Newcastle’s Brodie Jones and former NRL player Brock Lamb.

But he kept it hidden from his parents until on the cusp of adulthood.

“All of his mates weren’t practising churchgoers,” David says. “He didn’t want to be seen as an uncool guy. He said he felt a presence and spoke to God. He prayed. There’s been loads of times, in my mind, where (Max’s faith) has been fantastic.”

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If Max King was a yearling destined to be a racehorse and walked into a ring, his pedigree would almost guarantee he would be a sales topper.

His great grandfather, Cec, played five matches for South Sydney in the 1940s and father David played a handful of games for the Gold Coast in 1991-92 before having a long and successful career abroad.

But the standout in the bloodlines is Max’s grandfather, Johnny, who was a regular in the great St George team of the 1950s and 1960s which won 11 straight premierships.

Johnny still holds the record for scoring in the most consecutive grand finals (six), a feat only threatened by Crichton, who crossed in four straight deciders with the Panthers before joining King at Canterbury.

With a lineage like that, how could a fourth-generation rugby league player possibly fail?

“We don’t shove it down his throat what we achieved,” Johnny shrugs.

Johnny, 82, travels with the family to every one of Max’s games. When Max joined the Bulldogs, they were glad they could make the short drive down from the Hunter to Sydney most weeks rather than flying to the Gold Coast or Melbourne.

“I’m a diehard Berries or Bulldogs supporter now,” Johnny says. “I’ve got the jacket, cap and T-shirt – and I make sure I wear it at the games for him.

“I get down and congratulate him, like all the young kids do, at the fence. They’re cheering for Max as well as saying hello to me at the same time. People say hello to me, and then ask, ‘aren’t you a St George player?’ I say, ‘don’t worry about St George, I’m here for my grandson’.

“It gives him confidence to know his grandfather is supporting him. He doesn’t want me sticking up for St George.

“He wants me to be proud of him – and I am.”

But there was a time when Max thought his rugby league career, despite having played NRL, would never hit any great heights.

It’s been well documented the crippling foot injury which had his career on the brink four years ago. He was diagnosed with a rare condition called Haglund’s Syndrome, which is often associated with Achilles tendonitis. It can cause excruciating pain in the heel. The problem was so bad, master coach Craig Bellamy couldn’t even be convinced to offer King another deal at the end of the 2020 season after Max played just 12 games in two years for the Storm.

What’s lesser known was the heart condition which disrupted King’s NRL career before it had even started.

The tiny nick near King’s groin is proof of the three operations doctors needed to essentially rewire his heart, which would leave him recording beats of 230 per minute at its most extreme. He even stopped play during an under-20s match so he could be taken from the field during an episode.

King was eventually diagnosed with SVT, which is known for fast heart rhythms in the top chamber of the organ. It’s generally not life threatening, but it needed management.

He could perform sprints and push ups and physical contact in a short burst and have no problems. When he cooled down, he could feel the heart rate rush coming on. Sometimes, he would faint.

David remembers sitting in a car outside training before Max joined the Knights’ SG Ball side for a session. Max knew his heart was about to start racing. He asked his dad to put his hand on his chest.

“I put my hand on his heart and his heart was just racing at 100 miles per hour,” David says. “Half an hour later he was running up and down the field.

“In an under-20s match he felt it coming on. He took the ball up and got tackled and ended up just laying down. They took him off because they thought it was a head knock. By the time they got him to the sideline, he said, ‘I’m right now, I can go back on if you want me to’.”

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No rugby league player ever has a linear career, not least of all Max King.

“I see myself as a pub footballer battling away doing my best,” he says. “I’ve never been anywhere close (to Origin) in my career.”

Having been let go by Bellamy, King will be forever grateful for another great mind in rugby league, Phil Gould.

Gould offered King a chance when no one else would. Gould had only just been convinced to join the Bulldogs at their lowest, during their miserable wooden spoon season of 2021. He went about ripping up the roster and filling it with capable footballers of good character.

It seemed a match made in heaven: a broken footballer beset by injuries joining a broken club who’d forgotten how to win.

“I was struggling to manage that God would do all that, but leave me here still,” King says of his injury woes. “I felt like it was just a big test for my faith as well. I was out for two years. I was off contract, I had no club, I didn’t know what I was doing.

“I guess it was Gus (Gould) reaching out and giving me that lifeline.”

Mid-way through King’s first year at the Bulldogs, Gould and the Bulldogs board sacked Trent Barrett, weeks after Gould said the coach would be at the club long after him.

But there was a bright spot: King played every game in 2022.

Things weren’t much better for Canterbury the following year under new coach Cameron Ciraldo, Ivan Cleary’s highly-touted assistant at Penrith, but he knew the type of club he could build around a forward leader.

“In our first year in the first half of the season, we would have been screwed without him,” Ciraldo says.

Now, the Bulldogs sit atop this year’s NRL ladder and have produced the most unlikely debutant story, with NSW coach Laurie Daley overlooking the likes of Terrell May and Stefano Utoikamanu for King.

He’s earned a nickname around Belmore as “The Technician”, so dedicated to his craft has he been in recent years. There’s barely a more popular player and family, with his young son Hercules, inspired by the name of an Uber Eats driver who once dropped off a meal to King and Christy, now attending games.

Before this season, Max, 28, sat down with Ciraldo and asked him to write down three things he thought made a perfect front-rower. Ciraldo asked King to do the same. They came back with similar results.

During pre-season training, Canterbury staff would spy King pulling the piece of paper out of his pocket to remind himself of the three points.

The bond between the player and coach was never more evident when King scored in the Bulldogs’ rout of the Rabbitohs on Good Friday, his first try in six years. Television cameras caught Ciraldo jumping out of his chair in the coaching box liked he’d backed the winner of the Melbourne Cup who’d won by a pimple.

“We were in a lift at the hotel that morning and he accused me of using a burner account (on social media) sledging him in the middle of the night,” Ciraldo laughs. “I’d forgotten he hadn’t scored a try in that long.

“When he actually scored a try, I said, ‘how bloody good is that? Someone has been sledging him and he’s gone and made it happen’. That’s what he’s like. He loves this job and has fun every day. But when it comes to game time, he flicks the switch.

“He reminds me a lot of Jason Stevens, one of the nicest guys you could possibly meet off the field, but get on the field and he’s just a great competitor.”

And if his coach wasn’t happy enough, the cameras should have caught Caroline in the crowd.

She’s been putting $10 on Max each week to score a try in every game he plays. It’s been going on for years. He’s usually so unfancied to cross the line he generally pays about $15. King followed up the Good Friday try with another one against the Raiders in a stunning comeback win this month.

“She’s won about $300 over the last few weeks, but we’re still probably $2000 behind,” David laughs. “Miles behind.”

You sense that’s a confession they might want to make to their son at some time. And there’s no need to be ashamed about it either.