HE MIGHT well be the best player you've never heard of. South Sydney's Luke Stuart, who turned 32 this week, won last year's George Piggins Medal for best and fairest player; shared the Jack Rayner Players' Player award; won the Members' Choice award and was the player of the year as chosen by the group of Rabbitohs supporters known as "The Burrow".

So how does a front-rower - still perhaps the most important position in a "go-forward" game - earn selection by coaches, teammates, club members and an influential group of fans as the best player at South Sydney, yet only receive a contract renewal on a year-to-year basis? And why is Stuart the least known of the props in tonight's Charity Shield match against the Dragons, yet one of only two players to have been at the club since its reinstatement in 2002?

"It does annoy me," Stuart says of the yearly recontracting process, a significant concern for a family man with a four-year-old girl and 2½-year-old boy. "After a while, you come to realise that's the way football is. The contracting has been year-to-year deals for a few years now. It's something I have to deal with."

The almost complete lack of media attention is not a concern.

"Publicity is not something that comes my way," Stuart says, happy to be an artifact from a less ego-driven age, content to be underrated and overlooked.

There is a paradox at the heart of the working man's game: the men who labour the hardest are often valued the least.

The game-breakers, such as the Storm's Greg Inglis, Brisbane's Darren Lockyer and the Cowboys' Johnathan Thurston, are traditionally paid the most.

At South Sydney, Craig Wing and John Sutton receive the big money, although fellow prop Roy Asotasi is also well paid - principally because hiring the New Zealand international helped to lure others. In other words, Rabbitohs management understands the value players place on front-row forwards but - in the absence of a rival bid for Stuart - mark down their own.

For Stuart, his effort is his own reward. Every October, he climbs onto the roofs of houses with his brother, a mate and a carpenter's apron of tools, and quietly works through the long, hot days.

He has been doing this even before he started with the Sharks as a part-timer more than a decade ago. "I already had my builder's licence before I joined the Sharks," he says matter-of-factly. "Carpentry is something I continued to do while I didn't have a contract."