KEY POINTS:
Each of the NRL grand final sides boasts a New Zealand-raised player of Polynesian descent who has risen above a background of gang violence and channelled their aggression for good returns on the football field.
The Storm's benchman Sika Manu hasn't had much of a profile up to
now and reckons he once might have made the headlines for all the wrong reasons, but he's set to cap a stellar year in sport by being named in the Kiwis squad for the World Cup tournament.
Manly centre Steve Matai revealed a similar background, with affiliation to a street gang in Auckland before he found redemption in league and a career that has since allowed him to help others including his younger brother, Charlie, turn away from a pointless life of crime.
Manu made a name for himself when he smashed the Broncos forward Ashton Sims with a copybook driving tackle in the second to last minute of the knockout final in Brisbane a fortnight ago, shoulder to rib cage, driving the ball out. The Storm pounced, sent it wide and Greg Inglis scored in the corner to steal the match.
Manu didn't see the outcome, believed Sims still had the ball and stood to resume play at marker.
That was the 22nd game the Wellington-raised 21-year-old of Tongan-Samoan descent had played for the Storm this season from a possible 26, after debuting in 2007 and playing just three matches. He came to attention via Stephen Kearney's connections in Wellington and is sure to be in the Kiwis frame too, the Storm assistant and Kiwis coach well aware of the power the 107kg interchange forward brings and the impact he can make in a 17-man game, where every man is played out. He comes from a talented family, older brother Filipe signed with the Western Force, cousins Nasi Manu with the Canterbury Crusaders and his sister Elizabeth with the Canterbury Tactix.
Manu was headed in the wrong direction, just out of Upper Hutt College and linked to the Mongrel Mob, when he started to make his mark in league. He went from the Wellington NJC under-18s side to the Junior Kiwis in 2006 and had runs with the Warriors development group. But Storm talent scout Peter O'Sullivan signed him and his brother Filipe and Manu was sent to the Queensland Cup feeder side Norths Devils.
"If I was still in New Zealand I don't know what I'd be doing," Manu said this week, revealing that many of his former friends were or had been in jail and that he may well have ended up there too. "I didn't really get into the gang life but all my mates are."
He flats with Storm prop Jeff Lima and the pair share a post-game recovery kava session, as Lima learnt from Warrior Ruben Wiki during Kiwis camps. He is carrying a hamstring injury that he said hampered his game against Cronulla last weekend but will still play in tomorrow's final and credits the island drink for his recovery.
Matai will also go into the grand final carrying injury, bone fragments floating around in the right shoulder he uses to knock opposing ball-carriers senseless. Ask Mark Gasnier, KO'd in the test in Wellington in 2007, Matai unjustifiably sent off as English referee Steve Ganson over-reacted to what was a shoulder hit as the Kangaroo centre's head was coming down. The Manly centre is not a dirty player, just tough.
He has had to have painkilling injections at times in recent weeks and looks forward to surgery but as yet has not ruled himself out of the World Cup. If available, his selection would be a certainty.
He is of Samoan descent, played junior football for Ponsonby then made the Marist-Richmond Brothers side in the Bartercard Cup in 2004 before shifting to Queensland to try his luck in the state competition with Ipswich Jets. On a game-to-game deal with the Jets, he was then signed for the season by Wynnum-Manly and from there played trials with their associated NRL side the Manly Sea Eagles in 2005.
Matai played 11 games in the premiership that season, then all 24 games in 2006, earning selection for the Kiwis Tri-Nations squad. In 2007 his season was wrecked by persistent and repeat shoulder and neck injuries and he made just 10 appearances. This season he has played 21 games and surprised many with a 75 per cent goal-kicking record when filling in for Matt Orford. As with Manu, it could have been so different back in New Zealand where connection to a teen street gang resulted in him standing at the Auckland Hospital bedside a comrade who had been bashed by rivals. "We spent the next couple of weeks trying to find the guys that did it and I was thinking to myself, 'I'm sure there's something better out there'."
There was and thanks to their sport they both found it.
