EVERYONE WANTS a piece of the next big thing. Yet few have gone to the same lengths as the photographers that crawled through the school bushes just to get a single snap of a teenage superstar named Joseph Sua’ali’i.
Such was the esteem with which the Penrith-born prodigy was held that Sua’ali’i didn’t even have to be playing. His mere presence at the side of the pitch was enough to summon the press to a rugby union game at The King’s School, Parramatta amid the pandemic.
“You’ve got to understand these kids don’t come around often,” explains Stuart Woodhouse, the director of rugby at Sua’ali’i’s alma mater. “There’s a lot of external pressure and I think the school handled it really well to give him a normal life. They were crazy times.
“Press creeping into the school and all that kind of stuff. That’s how silly it was. Covid played a big part. He’d be at games watching when he was injured and they were trying to get photos of him and he had to deal with that.”
Why all the fuss? Well, Sua’ali’i excelled at the 15-a-side game from the day he joined on a character scholarship aged 13. “He was over 6ft and it was a man playing against children,” Woodhouse says, of the first time he saw him play.
“It was not a mismatch necessarily by size as he wasn’t a big man at around 70kg back then. But just his skill level and his thinking was way above other boys. His training age would have been at least ten years above his cohort.”
You could be forgiven for thinking that a boy so supremely talented might have become disengaged among his far less capable peers. Not Sua’ali’i.
Bu hikaye Rugby World dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber ? Giriş Yap
Bu hikaye Rugby World dergisinin June 2023 sayısından alınmıştır.
Start your 7-day Magzter GOLD free trial to access thousands of curated premium stories, and 9,000+ magazines and newspapers.
Already a subscriber? Giriş Yap
"I stress-test my coaches' ideas but ultimately you have to let the bakers bake"
Northampton Saints' director of rugby explains how to be an effective coach
REMEMBER WHEN...WE HAD A HOTLINE ON RUGBY GOING PRO
RW readers could ring in to have their say on the amateur-pro debate
RUGBY RANT
Editor Joe Robinson on why rugby needs to take kit launches more seriously
WHAT IT'S LIKE TO...BE A SEVENS REFEREE SELECTOR
Irish official David Keane lifts the lid on his role behind the scenes
“You can still be fully professional and enjoy yourself"
The Wales great who also represented the Lions and Scarlets with distinction
CLEVEDON RFC
Giving grass-roots rugby the love that it deserves...
Downtime with... Jacob Umaga - "Best player in my family? I have to say Uncle Tana"
The Benetton fly-half on Italy, basketball and talented kinsmen
SHANE MCDONALD
WHERE ARE THEY NOW?
100* Not Out
RW charts a century of Samoa's flagship national team, including its dramatic rebirth in the late 1980s
Chunk
More than a decade since his retirement, we caught up with Allan Jacobsen, the larger-than-life former Scotland prop