Family still searching for Sonny Fai five days on

Five days after promising young league player Sonny Fai disappeared in heavy surf off a west Auckland beach, his family and league friends refuse to abandon the search for his body.

Family, friends and Warriors rugby league teammates have been at Bethells Beach every day since the 20-year-old vanished after saving his younger brother when he got into trouble in the surf on Sunday.

Warriors team manager Don Mann said the Warriors had paid for a helicopter to search the surf three times this week and it may go up again tomorrow.

Fai had been touted as a National Rugby League and international star of the future.

Mann said his family would stay as long as they had to even though there was a chance his body may never be found.

"They are pretty much all out there. They will just keep going," he said.

He said the cost of chartering the helicopter was not important.

The police helicopter Eagle was also regularly searching the surf off Bethells Beach in the hope Fai's body would surface and could be recovered.

- NZPA