What are you up to these days Timana?
I’ve been working at the NRL for the last few years now. Taking the boots off and sitting behind a desk for the first time was a bit of a challenge but I’ve adjusted to it now.
I was like a lot of footy players and really only knew one thing growing up. You go from playing in junior rep teams while you’re a schoolboy to playing professionally and then you don’t really know anything else until your career finishes up, which is tough to prepare for.
But I’ve been at the NRL for five years now and it’s been a blessing for me, to jump off the field and still be part of on organisation that has looked after me for more than half of my life.
Can you tell us about your role at the NRL?
My job title says I work in Indigenous Elite Pathways and when I first got into the role, the main focus was to identify young indigenous players pushing through junior pathways and help them on their footy journey.
It’s now evolved quite a bit though and we’re also looking at developing coaches and other off field staff as well which has been great.
We use the All Stars match to bring a lot of good young Indigenous kids together each year and that’s something that I’ve loved being involved in.
You’ve got quite an unusual rugby league background. How did you end up playing up in Newcastle?
Yeah, well, I’m half Indigenous and half Maori which is pretty unique and I was born in Melbourne but moved pretty early on and lived in a few different towns around New South Wales.
By the time I hit high school, I was living mostly in Aboriginal hostels and I wasn’t playing much rugby league. I played touch footy but I was really into basketball and that’s probably where I thought my future was. But as I got older, all my teammates started to grow to 6’5”, 6’6” and I stayed at 6’2” so that was the end of that.
One day I was at a school trial and I got an invite to trial for the Knights Jersey Flegg team. It was during the Super League years when the Hunter Mariners were in the comp, so a lot of the good young players signed with them, which is probably why I got a start.
I went from playing third division footy in Newcastle, to playing Jersey Flegg with the Knights and two or three years later, I made my first grade debut in 1999. I was really lucky, looking back on it.
What was it like breaking into a Newcastle side coming off a premiership in 1997 and pushing towards another title in 2001?
I was there when Newcastle won the 1997 grand final. I remember standing on the side of the road and there was just a sea of people from Gosford all the way to Newcastle. The whole town partied for a week and as a 16-year old, it was a pretty good time.
Fast forward to 2001, I was sitting on the same bus that 16-year old me was looking at a few years earlier. It was pretty surreal and I was just so lucky to be a young guy in a team of genuine legends of the game. I think my whole football career was shaped by the guys I played alongside at Newcastle in my early days.
They just had a winning mentality and I learned so much about being a professional athlete by the work those guys did on and off the footy field.
For me, I was in the perfect place at the perfect time, which is pretty rare in sport.
After beating Parramatta in the 2001 grand final, you ended up joining the Eels. In hindsight, can you identify anything different between a Newcastle side that had plenty of success and a Parramatta side that never managed to quite get there?
I remember being really confident that we were going to win it in 2005. We had the team and the form at the right time of the year but we got to the semis and got knocked out by the North Queensland Cowboys. That was disappointing.
When you were at Newcastle, it really felt like you were playing for and representing your local community. Even though half the team were internationals or Origin players, when we all walked down the street, we weren’t footy stars, we were just part of the community and we were treated just like any other Novocastrian.
When you get to the big smoke, it’s different. That’s not a criticism of Parramatta, but it’s just a different feel.
I was around some really good players and some great coaches and we really should have done better in 2005, but if you’re asking the difference between the two clubs, we really felt like we were playing for the town in Newcastle and it wasn’t quite the same at Parra.
Who is the most underrated player you played with or against?
Wow that’s a tough one because there are quite a few but I think I’d have to say Preston Campbell.
He never got to player any rep footy but it had nothing to do with him, he just happened to play at the same time as Joey and Freddy and even Danny Buderus at dummy half.
He just had so many great players in the positions he played, and he could play a few, but he was really unlucky not to play for NSW or Australia.
I mean, he won the Dally M and still couldn’t make a rep side.
After returning to the Knights and playing some rugby union, you went back and kept playing well into your mid 30s. How did your body manage to go for as long as it did?
When I was just about ready to finish up, I got an invitation to go over and play rugby union in Denver as they were starting their first professional league over there.
It was an unreal experience and I’m really glad I did it, but my body was done. I was cooked.
A lot of players have regrets when they finish their career, but for me, I think I got absolutely every game of footy I could out of my body.
I was extremely blessed and now that I have transitioned into life after footy, I struggled for a while, but now I’m really enjoying working with young kids and hopefully helping them have some of the same experiences that I did.
