Too big for rugby, Eagles Mailata ready for NFL
Rookie makes the grade for Super Bowl champions less than a year into new career
He can laugh about it now, the concept of being “too big” that led him on this extraordinary journey to the Philadelphia Eagles.
Jordan Mailata has made the cut for the Super Bowl champions’ 53-man roster less than a year after first putting on a helmet and is ready to start his rookie season.
Mailata grew up in western Sydney, dreaming of making his living in Australia’s National Rugby League. He got close, too, with his work ethic and his pure bulk impressing the senior coaches at South Sydney, the NRL club owned by the actor Russell Crowe.
But, somehow, a theory that at 6-foot-8 and more than 158kg Mailata was too big for a game that relies so heavily on aerobic fitness became a potential roadblock to a lucrative ■ contact. So his agent put together a highlight video of this human wrecking ball rampaging through defences and making crunching tackles in the NRL’s Under-20 competition and sent it around.
The video was designed, Mailata said, “to help generate interest in the rugby universe”. It did way more than that. “At the same time it generated attention in the NFL,” he said. “I was quite lucky when I reached the crossroad in my life, the NFL pathway reached out to me as another avenue to pursue. That’s what it came down to.”
‘Surreal’ journey
Navigating the NFL’s International Pathway programme and the draft and then making the Eagles’ roster has been, as the 21-year-old offensive tackle put it, “surreal”.
A couple of nights before the Eagles were scheduled to open the season against Atlanta, Mailata was doing a telephone conference with reporters in Australia, where his story is making news even as the rugby league season heads into the play-offs. It was yesterday morning in Sydney, and Mailata prefaced his response to the first question: “Good to hear another Aussie on the phone.”
And with that, he may have single-handedly increased the NFL’s audience Down Under.
Mailata didn’t play football high school or college and wasn’t even thinking about the game in his late teens. He had two heart operations in 2015 which interrupted his junior rugby league progress, but has been given the all-clear. All in all, it has been a very non-conventional approach to the NFL.
“I guess it’s every American football player’s dream to be part of an NFL team and I’m quite lucky to be living my own dreams and theirs,” Mailata said. Colombia football coach Jose Pekerman has announced he does not wish to renew his contract.
“I’m sad not to be continuing; look at the guys and see what they achieved. The team drives them. To see Colombia so high in the Fifa national team rankings was so exciting,” Pekerman said. Pekerman coached the Colombian national team for six years. However, a poor showing in this year’s World Cup in Russia led to questions over his tenure. (IANS)