Taking the final step to superstardom
The first Kiwi to win the NRL’s Dally M Medal learned his skills on the tough league and rugby grounds of Otara. Jackson Thomas charts his rise.
‘‘. . . Dad really hammered home that we don’t quit. I have kept that with me.’’
Afather and son are silent, as they loosen their ties and sink back into wide armchairs in their Sydney hotel room. The 2018 Dally M Medal Awards has just wrapped up, and all the glitz and glamour of the event is spilling out onto the streets as rugby league’s best scatter to the various after-parties dotted across the city.
But the evening’s supreme award winner won’t be attending any of those. Instead, Roger Tuivasa-Sheck is about a kilometre north, sitting in contemplative silence across from the only person whose approval he has ever wanted.
Tuivasa-Sheck was born on June 5, 1993.
Growing up in New Zealand, most Kiwis have found themselves with a ball under their arm, dashing side to side to avoid defenders. But, like everything, there are some who do that better than others.
Every class had that kid who finished their spelling test first, that kid who consistently won cross country, or the natural-born Kapa Haka leader.
At Mayfield Primary School in O¯ tara, 1999, Tuivasa-Sheck was the kid always picked first for lunchtime rugby.
He grew up in a little white house on Ferguson Rd in south Auckland with his parents, younger brother, and two older sisters. He loved his childhood, and looks back fondly on the times spent in the family home and the long summers playing outside with his siblings.
The household was ‘‘normal as’’, with both parents working full time and the four kids happy to entertain each other at home and work hard at school.
‘‘I loved my life growing up in south Auckland, I really did. People always have stories of how rough life was and that but I really enjoyed my childhood,’’ he says.
It was a home full of love and laughter but, perhaps surprisingly, by no means sports-mad. His father, Johnny Snr, was a club rugby player in Auckland and a pretty handy one at that. He was a hotstepping wing, revered locally for his electric footwork and blinding pace off the mark.
He always hoped his children would gravitate towards his passion, but through the early years the softly-spoken Samoan never pushed sport on any of them.
‘‘Looking back I think Dad wanted us to find that spark ourselves, rather than be forced or pushed into anything.’’
Luckily for Johnny Snr – and, as it happens, all rugby league fans – his eldest son found that spark early.
Like many Auckland primary schools in the early 2000’s, tackle rugby was banned at Mayfield Primary. So, Roger and his younger brother Johnny would get to school early for a game of touch. ‘‘But that never lasted long,’’ he says. ‘‘Touch always turned into rugby and I would get put into detention pretty much every other day for tackling.’’
Word of that quickly got back to mum Liesha, who made the life-altering decision to sign her sons up to the local rugby club.
From his first game, it was clear Roger was special, his brother Johnny recalls.
Never the biggest or fastest, but impossible to out-compete, Roger regularly ‘‘shut down’’ the local neighbourhood games of touch and bullrush.
‘‘As soon as Rog came outside that was it, he was always the best no matter where or who we were playing.’’
Both Tuivasa-Sheck boys had natural ability.
But Roger was ‘‘different’’ mentally and looking back, Johnny recalls just how committed his brother was.
‘‘Rog and Dad would be outside practising all day and all night, seriously. Those two would be out there just drilling and drilling until he got it right.’’
Johnny Sr coached his son’s East Tamaki sides from under-nines. The side featured the two sons of former New Zealand sevens great Eric Rush.
Roger fell in love with winning, making all the youth representative sides, and said the game came pretty easy early on.
Johnny Snr was old school, however, and never heaped praise on his kids, despite both boys running in try-after-try, week-after-week.
The trademark step that has now placed him among rugby league’s all-time great outside backs wasn’t part of his game early on. He relied on grit and determination, and for the most part it worked.
But he lacked genuine X-factor.
It took going to watch his father play, when Roger was 12, for the trademark step to start taking shape.
‘‘I vividly remember watching one of his games and he was playing right wing. He got the ball with about 10 metres to work,’’ Tuivasa-Sheck says with a wry smile.
‘‘He squared the guy up, ball in two hands, and just put this big step on him. He went around him untouched to score.’’
After the game, Roger ran up to us father and begged to be taught that step. The step.
‘‘He just smiled and honestly, from then, from that moment we were at it pretty much every day.’’
Johnny Snr spoke Samoan and knew little English. Roger spoke English but knew little Samoan.
Teaching his son the art of the step couldn’t simply be told, it had to be shown. The pair would arrive at rugby training early, every Tuesday and Thursday, to get in some one-on-one work.
While the other kids would warm up with a game of touch, Roger would be off to the side with his father, working on his speed and perfecting his own version of dad’s lethal left foot.
‘‘I remember one time I got to training and I saw this sled sitting by where we train,’’ he says.
‘‘Dad was a PT (personal trainer) by trade, he made me drag it up and down the field and all the kids started laughing ‘cos it looked stupid, you know.
‘‘I almost had a tear in my eye but he just kept saying ‘don’t be lazy, don’t be lazy, forget about them’. The premier boys started arriving to train and I was so embarrassed but, looking back now that’s just one of many times where Dad really hammered home that we don’t quit. I have kept that with me.’’
By the time high school rolled around, Roger was convinced he not only had what it took to make it as a professional player, but that he could be one of the greats.
However, all that hit a speed bump when he got to college. More players and stiffer competition shunted Roger into the background.
He was overlooked for the Auckland under-16s, 17s and his school’s first XV for three years, prompting the now humbled kid from O¯ tara to rethink his life.
He told his father he was doubting himself, but Johnny Snr refused to accept that.
‘‘It was really tough for me to miss out on sides ‘cos I had never dealt with the disappointment before. But dad just kept saying if we work hard we’ll get there so, that’s what we did.’’
In his later years at high school, that work paid off.
Roger excelled in the classroom and on the training paddock, eventually breaking into the Otahuhu College first XV.
After an outstanding year at fullback, he became the only player from his school selected in the New Zealand Schoolboys side.
The season ended on a high and the 17-year-old was looking forward to taking some long overdue rest. That was until a group of schoolmates convinced him to give league a go.
Roger was a gifted rugby union player, but league was where his game – and the step – really came to life.
Opposition teams would make the tactical decision to run the ball on the last, or attack from inside their own end, rather than kick the ball to the electric fullback.
The school would rise as one on the sidelines when Roger did get the ball, knowing the inevitable was coming.
Players swiping at thin air, bodies left face down on the ground as the hotstepper from O¯ tara showcased his father’s work for all to see.
The NZ Warriors quickly saw Roger’s talents and he was soon picked for their youth academy.
That’s when life got busy.
Back then, in 2011, Roger would finish school at 3pm and race to train at the Warriors.
Two hours later, while others headed home to ice the body, he would dash across town to train with the Auckland Blues pre-academy squad, which he made off the back of his stellar rugby union years.
He’d arrive home at about 7pm, but despite the rigorous training involved with being chased by both codes, the training with Dad did not relent.
By the back end of that year he was the school’s best player and one of New Zealand’s hottest sporting prospects.
As captain, he led O¯ tahuhu to the national secondary schools competition, where he finished as the talk of the tournament.
Peter O’Sullivan (now with the Warriors), was a recruiter at the time for the Sydney Roosters. He shoulder-tapped the rising star and convinced Roger and his father to head across to Bondi and meet with the Roosters. Nothing formal, just a chat.
From there, ‘‘everything went crazy’’.
The NRL
By October, 2011, he had options in both codes on the table, but made the ‘‘massive decision’’ to sign with the Roosters.
It’s hard for any kid to move away from home, harder still when it means leaving your family. And leaving your lifetime coach.
At 18, Roger was by himself in the big city and a member of the NRL’s most high-profile club. He didn’t have Dad around, no familiar school fields and on his first day at training, walked into the gym alone and star-struck.
A legend of the game, Australia and NSW fullback Anthony Minichiello, spotted him wandering aimlessly and decided to take the new kid under his wing.
‘‘I was so lucky when I got to the Roosters to have a guy like Anthony at the club, and as my mentor,’’ he says.
‘‘I was just a shy kid from south Auckland when I got there. He let me just be his shadow for a few years there and was always willing to help work on my game and answer questions. Zero ego.’’
Whatever the superstar fullback was telling Roger, it worked.
He starred for their Under-20s side in 2012, scoring nine tries in 12 games. In round 21 of that season, he made his NRL debut. Fittingly, in his father’s favoured position of right wing.
‘‘He was electric, right from the jump you could tell, but I played long enough to know talent doesn’t always get you there,’’ Minichiello recalls.
‘‘He was really respectful and humble when he came into grade. Just a good kid and you could tell that right away.’’
‘‘Obviously we knew the speed, power and footwork were there from the get-go, but the best thing about Roger was he asked questions and wanted to learn. That’s something I now know his old man drilled into him.
‘‘That footwork, he’s right up there with the best ever, honestly. The thing with Roger’s step is he doesn’t lose any speed. There is so much power throughout the motion, combined with the fact he can do it off both feet.’’
In 2013 the Roosters charged into the NRL grand final, and Roger won his first premiership as a 20-year-old.
He would spend two more years in Bondi, carving a name for himself as one of the most electrifying players in the game, before returning home to rejoin the Warriors in 2016.
The Dally M Medal
The journey from O¯ tara to the game’s biggest stage, came full circle on September 26, 2018.
In front of the biggest names in rugby league, Tuivasa-Sheck became the first ever Warrior to claim the game’s supreme award.
He was overcome with emotion, as a spine-tingling haka was performed by his teammates Jazz Tevaga and Issac Luke. All those hours in the backyard, all the blood, sweat and tears shed to get him to that moment began to bubble over.
As Roger left the stage to return to his table, thunderous applause echoing around him, he made a beeline for his father. There was no need to zig-zag this time.
‘‘To have him there meant the world to me. That was a moment we had both worked so hard for.’’