There’s a list of records young Queensland centre Robert Toia will break or equal for his State of Origin debut, opposite Latrell Mitchell no less: player with fewest NRL games to start an Origin, first in 30 years to make his NRL and Origin debut in the same year, more games in reggies than the top grade … the list goes on if you keep digging hard enough.

You can add another one: first Origin player, in perhaps forever, to have his dad style his hair on the eve of his debut.

“He called me last week and said, ‘Dad, are you able to cut my hair before the game?’ I said, ‘Yeah, sweet’,” laughs Toia’s dad Beau.

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Bobby T might be the cool new kid on the Origin block, but it’s debatable if he’s even the coolest member of his family in Brisbane this week.

That honour might just belong to Beau, a barber by day and DJ by night, a fixture of Brisbane’s Fortitude Valley who knows his way around the decks – and can now promote his set as a chance to meet an Origin player’s dad.

When Billy Slater rang Robert, the young Roosters centre, last week to inform him he would be making his Queensland debut at The Cauldron, the 20-year-old was almost speechless. He’s unfailingly polite, sometimes super shy.

But for most of his childhood he’s struggled to get a word in anyway.

Toia is the third-eldest of 10 children, with six brothers and three sisters, having arrived in Australia with his family from New Zealand when he was just six.

“It was good in a way because we didn’t really have much, but the love we had in our family was more than anything to be honest,” Beau says. “For Rob, it was great because he had some brothers he could practise with in the backyard.

“With that amount of kids, I had to work two jobs to keep us afloat.”

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That can come at a cost, but it also comes with some priceless moments.

By the time Toia was finishing up at Nudgee College, where he was courted to play rugby union despite being tied to the Roosters, DJ Beau was playing in front of audiences which included his son.

“There was this one time I was DJing in The Valley and after school, I turned around and saw him standing next to me in the DJ booth,” Beau says.

“I just felt old. I saw all his old mates and they’re still calling me Mr Toia. ‘Hi, Mr Toia’. He asked for a drink and I said, ‘Meet me at the bar’. I went there and then turned around and all 15 of his mates were standing there too.

“All of my wages that night went on their drinks.”

Which is why on Thursday morning when the carnival has closed on Caxton Street and there will be sore heads throughout the suburbs, Beau will be back on the clippers teaching his family the value of hard work.

The assumption is Toia’s rise to rugby league’s fiercest arena has been meteoric.

He only made his NRL debut in the opening round this year, when with one of his first touches of the ball, he shimmied past Ben Hunt and then proceeded to fend his Roosters captain, the supporting James Tedesco, thinking he was a covering Brisbane defender. Another first.

But the journey has been anything but fast.

He suffered two ACL injuries before he even made it to the NRL, as well as a broken jaw, enough to stop any athlete in their tracks, let alone one still in their teens and maturing.

“I thought he was really strong,” Roosters coach Trent Robinson tells foxsports.com.au.

“It’s not easy having two ACLs under 20. There are two things there to see: talent and character. His talent had to be put on pause, and his character had to take over. It developed him into now playing on Wednesday night.

“For him to recognise what was needed is rare.”

Says Beau: “I learned a lot from him to be honest. If it was me back then, I would have went the other way. A kid his age, you wouldn’t think he would come out the other end like that.”

Toia has long been a project for the Roosters, who have shrewdly introduced players into their academy at an age before they’re even allowed to get their learner’s driving licence.

Toia signed with the club when he was 14. He would fly down from Queensland each week to play in the Roosters’ under-age teams, and the talent was immediately clear.

“I didn’t know much about him then, but all I knew is that he missed about 12 flights one year,” laughs Roosters legend Jake Friend, who works with the club’s young academy players. “We just kept booking new ones and kept telling him it was alright.

“As he came into the academy, we got to know him a little bit better, then he had a couple of big injuries, which set him back. But I think that’s what has made him.

“(Before that) he was smart enough to know what he had to do on and off the field. Was he applying himself to the absolute best he could? Probably not. Then he (moved to Sydney) in the academy units and we started teaching him about food and whatnot, and these injuries have turned him into the ultimate professional.”

In a rapidly evolving era of SuperCoach addicts and analytics, Toia’s start to his NRL career would hardly have wowed the numbers boffins.

He’s scored three tries in his first 10 games, made four line breaks, averages 110 running metres per game, good tackle efficiency at 93.6 per cent from centre, arguably the hardest defensive position in the game. It’s all very solid.

But they’re just numbers. The eye test is also valuable in rugby league. Robinson and Slater know that.

“A lot of the reason guys get in when they’re young is their talent, but it’s his work ethic which has really laid the platform for his first 10 games,” Robinson says. “There are talented moments, but the work ethic has been 80 minutes worth.

“That’s surprising for a guy so early in his career. It’s normal to have five minutes off, 10 minutes off or a game off, but he’s really been consistent in his work ethic in the movements he makes in defence, the extras he does on transitions, and then his support in his role in attack.”

Wayne Bennett saw it, too.

While he was still at the Dolphins, Bennett tried to prise Toia back to Redcliffe, noticing the immense potential in the kid whose family still lived in Brisbane’s northern suburbs. Robert jests that Beau was “fangirling” when they spoke to the supercoach. But the Toias stuck with the Roosters, who stuck by Robert as his injuries took hold. The club has also got Robert’s younger brothers, Loka and Mana, under contract.

In the first time he addressed the media last week upon his Origin call-up, Robert was asked about the prospect of marking Mitchell. He just smiled, a nervous giggle. He said he looked up to Mitchell. Like every Queenslander, he will put on a maroon cape and try to cut down NSW’s silent assassin in front of 50,000 rabid supporters. The most interaction he had with Slater before last week was using a controller as a kid to make his character run on Rugby League Live.

“I think we expected this of Rob,” Friend says. “The consistency he’s done it with really early is awesome. I believe he’s been picked in the Queensland team because of his defence and his effort areas. He’s got that wow factor, but he wasn’t looking for headlines. He fitted into his system and did his role. That’s pretty cool.”

But maybe not as cool as bonding with your dad over a haircut on the eve of your Origin debut. That’s time in the chair you can’t put a price on.