Driven by grief and by pride
MOEAKI Fotuaika hurts ... every day.
It is not the pain of a Titans training session, or the sting of the bone-crunching tackles the boom 18-year-old prop felt in his NRL debut against Canberra on Saturday.
This pain cuts deeper. Strikes him right in the heart. A pain to which few can relate. A pain that has left Fotuaika with part-motivation, part-frustration as he searches for the answers he knows will never come.
It is five years since his older brother, Mosese Fotuaika, tragically took his life during a stint with the Wests Tigers. He was 20.
It was a tragedy that rocked rugby league , triggering a concerted NRL push to get serious about the mental health issues afflicting the code’s rising stars.
Moeaki was 13 when he received the phone call that could have broken him interminably. For a while, it nearly did. But here he is, stronger for the pain.
When Fotuaika runs out to face the might of the Melbourne Storm on Saturday night at Suncorp Stadium, he will be upholding the NRL dream for a brother he wishes was still here.
“Not a day goes by when I don’t think about him,” says Moeaki, speaking for the first time about Mosese’s tragic suicide.
“When I run on to the field, I look up to the sky and remember him, then I look back down at the ground and I say, ‘Game on’.
“Every day he is not here hurts. You don’t expect to lose a family member in that way, but I just hope he and my family are proud that I’ve made it in the NRL.
“It definitely means a lot to be playing first grade. I want to carry on what my brother left behind. I just want to make him proud.”
As kids growing up in the New Zealand town of Gisborne, Moeaki could not have envisaged losing Mosese.
Theirs was a typical brotherly bond that involved football and mini-brawls in the backyard.
When their parents moved to Australia in 2007 to give their sons a better shot at life, Mosese fashioned an NRL
NOT A DAY GOES BY WHEN I DON’T THINK ABOUT HIM MOEAKI FOTUAIKA
dream. For Moeaki, the fire within had also been lit.
They both attended Keebra Park High on the Gold Coast. They had ambitions to play NRL together.
Now only Moeaki remains, his life’s journey altered by the events of February 28, 2013.
“Things have never been the same for me since that day (when Mosese passed away),” he says.
“I remember finishing training one day. I had all these missed calls from my sister-in-law.
“I rang her back and in her voice I could tell she had been crying. When I got back to the house, she told me the news of what Mosese had done.”
Moeaki says he has never shed so many tears.
“I just cried and cried, couldn’t stop,” he says.
“At the time, I didn’t really understand what Mosese was going through.
“Since I’ve grown older, there are things that he went through and I have gone through it myself.
“I wouldn’t say I have gotten to that point (suicide), but I’ve had my mental demons. I’ve had a few setbacks in football but I always try to stay positive about life.”
When coach Garth Brennan announced Fotuaika’s debut last week, Titans players roared with delight and piled on top of him. That’s what he means to the squad.
“The boys love Mo,” Brennan says.
“He’s just a lovely kid but he can play the game, too.”