Joey Manu just became New Zealand’s most influential athlete; the challenge facing Scott Robertson and Wrexham FC’s rise continues.
League superstar convert set to force day of reckoning on All Blacks overseas selection hot potato; what will Razor Robertson’s plan for Joey Manu be; Wrexham’s rise is sport’s heart-warming story of the year; pro surfing’s Goat finally retires.
During tumultuous times wracking the code, a gift from the heavens arrived at the doorstep of New Zealand Rugby this week.
The footballing gods delivered 27-year-old Joseph Manu, an athlete nearing the peak of his remarkable powers, to rugby in the form of a multi-million dollar contract with Sir Steve Hansen’s Toyota Verblitz in Japan.
The All Blacks have just been handed the best cross-code player since Sonny Bill Williams.
That’s if they don’t do a Roger Tuivasa-Sheck to him. Back to RTS and rugby’s mishandling of another rare talent shortly...
A veteran dual-code observer who knows a lot more than me insisted that “Joey Manu is by a country mile” the best current player in either game who calls New Zealand home.
That was four years ago.
Manu was already coming off back-to-back NRL grand final triumphs with the Sydney Roosters in 2018 and 2019, after being lured across the Tasman as a raw teenage prospect from Tokoroa High School.
But it was before he became a real force of nature for the Roosters, playing across every backline position bar halfback. And before his Golden Boot triumph in 2022 as the game’s best international player.
Manu is arguably still approaching his best football. He can do things few players in either rugby code can.
Even cold, hard statistics are capable of painting a vivid picture of his brilliance.
Last week, he ran for 370 metres with the ball in hand for the Roosters against the Newcastle Knights - an NRL record.
Think about that for a moment. That’s sprinting three lengths of a football field and then another three-quarters on top of that. All with the ball in your hands, fending off and beating opponents. Most can only dream of achieving that milestone in a season. Manu does it in one game.
So Manu’s announcement that the current season would be his last in the NRL came as a massive blow to rugby league - and a colossal opportunity for rugby, during a time when the game is finding it difficult to produce anything positive.
We should all be getting very excited about the potential of Manu’s exquisite skills being added to an All Blacks outside backs mix already featuring the talents of Jordie Barrett and Will Jordan.
Come 2027 and a Rugby World Cup tournament played out on the hard and fast grounds of Australia, All Blacks coach Scott Roberston could have a backline to die for.
But here’s where it all gets a little murky - and where those who still shiver over how Tuivasa-Sheck’s time in rugby was squandered may have some justification for fear over the same thing happening to Manu.
Manu is technically available for the All Blacks (and also in rugby test terms the Cook Islands and the Wallabies*) in the sense he is a New Zealander and has said previously that he would love to one day play for the All Blacks.
But his professional rugby contract is with a Japanese car manufacturer and not New Zealand Rugby (NZR), as is currently required if you want to don a black jersey.
We all know Robertson would like NZR to relax those rules so he could select players like Richie Mo’unga from the same Japan League One competition that Manu will be rubbing shoulders with the top talent on show.
Razor now has a fresh incentive to keep pressuring NZR. In fact, Manu is arguably a stronger long-term World Cup prospect than Mo’unga and therefore more likely to become the first player to be selected as an All Black from overseas.
The challenge for the current All Blacks coach is that he will have little to no control or influence over Manu’s immediate transition to rugby.
The irony is much of that lies in the hands of his predecessor Ian Foster and the man who has thrown him a coaching lifeline post last year’s Rugby World Cup campaign, Foster’s predecessor Sir Steve Hansen announcing that news this week.
Foster held the All Blacks reins when Tuivasa-Sheck switched codes.
Rugby didn’t exactly cover itself in glory creating a clear pathway for a successful transition for RTS. He was starved of game time, shuffled around the Blues and Auckland backlines and mostly neglected by an All Blacks brains trust that had become wedded to a Jordie Barrett midfield bludgeoning option.
After two seasons, Roger got the hint and returned to the Warriors, electrifying Mt Smart every time he touches the ball (which is a lot more often than happened in rugby).
Perhaps it’s a good thing NZR doesn’t have its hands on Manu’s transition because it then can’t stuff it up like it did with RTS.
Manu is likely to flourish in the attack-minded Japanese competition and will quickly find his feet without the NZR boffins looking over his shoulder.
Among his teammates at Toyota will be All Blacks test centurion, halfback Aaron Smith, and Springboks World Cup winner Pieter du Toit. Hansen and Foster could do with some Manu magic. Toyota are only mid-table in this season’s league and underperforming relative to a stellar roster which includes Beauden Barrett.
Manu’s departure from rugby league and the NRL has been portrayed across the Tasman as a massive blow to the game.
And it is.
The wealthy and influential Roosters rarely lose a player they want to keep and had not counted upon Manu walking away from league and them completely.
They felt they could satisfy Manu’s desire to maximise his international value with a couple of undemanding seasons in either French or Japanese rugby while readying himself for a return to the Roosters as the long-term successor to team captain and fullback James Tedesco.
Tedesco, the current Australian captain, is an NRL and Roosters icon and the club has been very protective of managing his legacy, including replacing him at fullback, a position long coveted by Manu.
But the Roosters appear to have mismanaged Manu’s exit, perhaps testing his patience. There is no return plan.
Manu’s representatives say that such is his respect for the Roosters that he would never play for any other club.
Yet no Kiwi Super Rugby Pacific franchise can possibly match what Manu will reputedly be paid over a two-season contract in Japan, beginning at the end of this year.
The Roosters were willing to pay him A$1 million ($1.088m) a season to keep him in Bondi. Rivals St George said they would pay A$1.2m.
Manu’s Japanese contract will eclipse any NZR contract offering under a central contract that included a Kiwi Super Rugby club stint.
It will be his priority and he is not going to sacrifice hard dollars for a lower wage playing Super Rugby for the elusive promise of All Blacks match earnings under flighty coaches (not that a Razor-led regime is likely to feature such characteristics).
Do you see where I am going here?
After two years in Japan and a Rugby World Cup within his sights, Manu will either extend his time further in Japan, or jump to an even bigger offer from a French club.
Manu is highly unlikely to ever play rugby in New Zealand or for New Zealand unless Robertson can convince NZR of some breakthrough decision-making (that will create precedents which will be almost impossible to unwind once enacted).
But Manu is much too talented for the All Blacks to ignore him, or to butcher the opportunity as we did with RTS.
The greatest tragedy would be if Manu played out his professional rugby career largely unseen in a corner of Japan or tucked away in France and never got to grace the test arena.
He - and we as rugby fans - deserve better.
(* Don’t panic over the reference to the Wallabies. Manu was born in Hamilton and is of Māori and Cook Islands descent. He would qualify for the Wallabies on Australian residency grounds from his time in the NRL but I don’t think even Joe Schmidt has persuasive enough powers to make that happen... although you never know).
In the avalanche of content described as “reality fly-on-the-wall sports docudrama”, Welcome to Wrexham is an unlikely success story,
Hollywood stars buy down-on-its-luck Welsh football club and somehow revitalise an entire town - make that city, with Wrexham recently bestowed with that status post its unlikely newfound celebrity status.
In a morally bankrupt global sports world awash with corrupt Saudi petro-dollars and shifty club owners, fairy tales happen less often.
So when they do, they capture attention.
This week Welcome to Wrexham kicked a hat-trick. The stunningly successful Disney series has been filming and editing its third season on the run as Wrexham wrestles to achieve an improbable achievement of back-to-back promotion in English football’s professional leagues. A 6-0 win over rivals Forest Green Rovers secured promotion to the League One championship, which is effectively the English third division and just two tiers off Premier League status.
The rise of Wrexham under the opportune ownership of Ryan Reynolds and Rob McElhanney is a compelling sports story, not the least because it offers a seductive counter-narrative to the increasingly thuggish and corporate nature of top sport.
The business story is compelling enough in itself.
McElhanney, intrigued by a promotion-relegation route foreign to American pro sport, convinces Reynolds to co-invest with him as the pair pay around £2 million ($4.22m) in 2021 for Wrexham FC, the third-oldest professional club in the world but who are languishing in the National League, the lowest of five nationwide professional divisions in English football.
Back-to-back promotions doesn’t just happen. The pair threw money at new players and a decent coach and latest filed accounts reveal the club owe nearly £9m to their owners.
But turnover is soaring, up to almost £10.5m annually and increasing rapidly.
Canny marketing - including the star duo joining TikTok in a club sponsorship deal - has seen the value of Wrexham soar to £8 million, according to Saxo Bank - a 300 per cent increase in just three years.
Along the way, something else quite endearing seemed to happen. Reynolds and McElhanney seemed to genuinely fall in love with the Wrexham community and vice versa.
That romance has revitalised Wrexham to the degree their home matches are always sold out and the tiny Welsh community is now a must-visit for American fans. This unlikely osmosis is captured brilliantly in the first two seasons of Welcome to Wrexham.
Season three will now include the current success and increased TV grant money as they climb leagues has suddenly made the bold claim of one day achieving Premier League status a lot less fanciful than previously thought.
Wrexham are now becoming a global phenomenon. League One status means regular coverage in America on EPSN, which will only swell further the legion of fans Stateside. More power to Deadpool and his mate.
Kelly Slater
Chaired up the beach at Western Australia’s Margaret River, the world’s greatest-ever surfer racked his competition cue at age 52 after being knocked out of a World Surf League event in the round of 32.
The defeat meant the 11-times world champion could not qualify for the end-of-season WSL finals, prompting Slater to finally call time on a stunning 33-year career which began when he first qualified for the world tour in 1991.
He became the youngest world champion in history a year later when he claimed his first Pipeline Masters and the crown at age 20. A week short of his 50th birthday, he won the same event again in 2022, his 56th career tour victory.
Aussie Super Rugby teams
“New Zealand no longer the lions’ den” screamed the Aussie headline as the Ockers contemplated a rare feat - five out of 12 wins by Australian Super Rugby Pacific teams against Kiwi opposition to date in 2024.
Gabriel Sloane-Rodrigues and Macey Fraser
Remember the names. Gabriel Sloane-Rodrigues is the youngest male Wellington Phoenix player to play in the A-League and, just three months shy of his 17th birthday, has signed for the next three seasons. And Macey Fraser has become the Phoenix’s first graduate to a major pro club from its women’s team after the Utah Royals smashed the A-League transfer record by signing the rising Football Ferns midfield star to a six-figure deal to play in the National Women’s Soccer League (NWSL).
Ruahei Demant
Wins a maiden Super Rugby Aupiki title with the Blues over favourites Chiefs Manawa and then rightfully calls on NZR for more investment and resource into the premier women’s competition after a ridiculously condensed season.
Trevor McKewen is one of New Zealand’s most experienced journalists and sports business commentators. He is a former Head of Sport for NZME and has also held senior executive roles at NZ Rugby and the Warriors and holds a particular interest in the commercial side of sport.
Saturday was hard to reconcile with what we have seen over the last two months.