The cross-code star will rejoin the Warriors ranks in 2024, signing a three-year deal and making the current Super Rugby campaign his last with the Blues. Video / NZ Herald
OPINION:
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck’s decision to return to the NRL next year has delivered little in the way of shock factor.
The story of league converts coming across to rugby, not quite making the transition as successfully as they hoped and then returning to the NRL a few years later, isone New Zealanders have seen more than a few times now.
Rugby has never hit the jackpot when it has spun the wheel with league players and while there was an air of excitement when Tuivasa-Sheck signed with the Blues in late 2021, it was driven more by hope than expectation.
Plenty have swapped codes in the last two decades but it’s debatable whether even two of the most successful converts, Sonny Bill Williams and Brad Thorn, would be universally considered better rugby players than they were league players.
The way rugby is played these days, it can often look like league with lineouts, so it’s easy to believe well-conditioned athletes who have speed, agility and the ability to pass and catch should be able to succeed at both.
This is especially true when it comes to New Zealand’s best league players, as many, including Tuivasa-Sheck, have played rugby in their formative years.
But the tactical differences between the two codes are greater than they appear and simply having athleticism, speed, power and experience in collision work is not enough to enable even NRL superstars from jumping across to rugby and having the same sort of influence.
In comparison with other high-profile league converts, Tuivasa-Sheck’s time in rugby can be considered a relative success.
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck has left the Blues for the Warriors on a three-year deal. Photo / Getty
His incredible footwork allowed him to bring something different to the second-five role in which he has mostly played, and his repertoire of clever short kicks – a skill set in which the NRL is miles ahead of rugby – put him in a category of one.
There is plenty to like about how he’s played, but there are elements of his game that reflected league was in his DNA and the code to which his instincts would naturally revert.
Broadly speaking, rugby and league share a basic defensive vision of shutting the opposition down, but the micro detail of how they operate is different, and while Tuivasa-Sheck is brave and determined, the nuances of his role in rugby continue to trouble him.
For his peers, who have only ever played rugby, much of their movement and positioning happens without them thinking. They naturally read the game, can see where the attack is heading and move accordingly, because they have been doing it for years.
But for all that he is the consummate professional with a determination to learn, Tuivasa-Sheck hasn’t built that same innate sixth sense.
The All Blacks picked him in their squad last year, but he’s only won three caps and his lack of time on the park suggested there was a lingering fear among the coaching fraternity that at the highest level, Tuivasa-Sheck’s decision-making – with and without the ball – would reflect his lack of affinity with his new code.
Perhaps if he gave himself another three years at the Blues he’d build the understanding he would need to become a regular All Black, but he’s heading back to the NRL, probably because, like many of his code-hopping peers, he’s realised that having given rugby a go, league is ingrained in his system and may take years to be worked out of it.
All Blacks midfielder Roger Tuivasa-Sheck. Photo / Photosport
Blues chief executive Andrew Hore has said the decision is the right one for both parties, signalling he accepts that Tuivasa-Sheck’s heart belongs with league.
Hore can be that gracious about it all because the Blues didn’t break the bank to bring Tuivasa-Sheck across the divide.
The transfer was driven by Tuivasa-Sheck’s desire to give himself a mid-career challenge. He instigated the move, set his own goals, and came across on rugby’s financial terms.
He made the All Blacks on merit and not because New Zealand Rugby chased after him with an obscene pay deal while telling the world he would change the face of world rugby.
Now that he’s going back to league, it’s almost a case of no harm, no foul and confirmation that New Zealand’s refusal to see the NRL as some kind of talent bazaar is exactly right.
This is not how things are across the Tasman, where the financially-damaged Rugby Australia has once again decided that its road to recovery lies in poaching players out of league.
RA last month threw the better part of $6 million to lure 19-year-old Joseph Suaalii from the Roosters and Wallabies coach Eddie Jones is promising more raids.
These smash-and-grab acquisitions win headlines, but not much more as the Australians have had much the same lack of success with their league converts as New Zealand.
They will tell you that Wendell Sailor, Lote Tuqiri and Mat Rogers delivered when they were snaffled from the NRL, but it’s hard to say they were value-for-money acquisitions given the enormous sums they were paid and the lack of silverware they produced.
They were good players, but none were great and none stayed in rugby once they came across.
It was the same story over there – you could take the superstars out of the NRL, but not the NRL out of the superstars and while NZR will part company with Tuivasa-Sheck later this year with everyone still friends, it’s unlikely this will be the same scenario in Australia, if, and probably when, their big-money league converts fail to transition into rugby legends.
