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After reading this article I think this is one Mungo most would hope to see do well at Rugby.
Even if he's wearing the Powder Blue.
FROM RUGBYHEAVEN.
Timana Tahu made his most dramatic transition a long time before being recruited to rugby union - and it changed his life, writes Rupert Guinness.
One day, when Timana Tahu was in his mid-teens, he looked his mum, Linda, straight in the eye and took several deep breaths before summoning the courage to tell her of the decision that would change his life forever.
The son of divorced parents who raised him in St Kilda, where he was born, Tahu asked Linda if he could leave home to live in an Aboriginal hostel. It was a bold request driven by an unsettled childhood.
"Outback towns … they are really hard. They are struggling at the moment with drought," he says. "For people who live out there it is getting really hard. The towns become boring and then young teenagers look for stuff to do. Some get on drugs. Some steal. Some start drinking at an early age. A lot of kids out there are on drugs and drinking alcohol at 12, 13 or 14. I have seen all that. It was something I didn't want to do. It was a path I didn't want to go down because there was nothing in [that] life [other] than drinking and doing drugs."
Tahu's courage in making such a life-changing decision has since become one of his defining characteristics. He is his own man, and while he listens to advice, Tahu takes responsibility for all his decisions.
That was never clearer than the manner in which he switched from league to union last year. He not only negotiated his deal without a manager, but he did so in utmost secrecy - to the degree that he publicly declared on television that he found rugby "boring" in a bid to quell growing speculation that a switch was imminent.
Now 27 years old, Tahu drives past the Kirinari Hostel most weekends en route to the Newcastle suburb of Cardiff to see his in-laws with wife Kasey and his three children.
"What I like about those kids in the hostels … they have made the choice that they want to do something with their lives. And there are a lot of kids out there who have had a tougher life than I had," he says.
While at Kirinari, Tahu attended Cardiff High School, where he began dating Kasey when they were aged 16. But it was not Tahu's education that paved the way for his life as a football star, but his absenteeism.
Tahu admits he "wagged" school to attend a Hunter Valley regional trial, where a scout from the Newcastle Knights saw him play and invited him to trial with the Knights under-19s.
Tahu accepted, and by Year 11 he and Kasey had left Cardiff High - he as a league recruit and she as a hairdresser. From there, "everything went so fast" in his private and footballing lives, Tahu says with a smile.
By age 18, he and Kasey were parents of the first of their three children - daughter Leketa, now aged eight. Tommy, six, and Larni-Ann, who turns five next week, followed.
On the field, Tahu's rugby league career blossomed. He represented Country, NSW in the State of Origin, and Australia, and was part of the Knights side that won the grand final against Parramatta in 2001. Indeed, he scored the match-winning try in the NRL decider.
It was a league career he believes was shaped in part by two key coaching influences. The first was his old Knights coach Warren Ryan, who instilled in him the resilience that is still his trait today.
"He made me tough," says Tahu. "Even though I struggled in training and with him being on my back at a young age, he brought the best out of me. They were probably the toughest years of my life."
Tahu recalls the biggest blast Ryan gave him - against Balmain at Leichhardt just a few games into his debut season in 1999 when the Knights lost and he played a shocking game after borrowing an old pair of boots with short studs in slippery and wet conditions.
"When we had a video session review, the 'Wok' had every clip where I slipped over. He said, 'You're never playing a first-grade game again'. He ripped me. I was nearly in tears. It shattered me."
After that 1999 season, Tahu was recalled early for pre-season training under the orders of Ryan, who felt he was unfit.
"But this is where I am now, from him doing that to me," Tahu says. "I could have said, 'Stuff you, I don't want to do that, no one else is doing it'. I could have whinged and complained. But I got stuck in and this is where I am today."
Tahu also credits his former Parramatta coach Brian Smith for making him a "complete" footballer when he joined the Eels in 2005 after initial negotiations with the Brumbies that could have seen him play union earlier.
"I still had a lot of weaknesses in my game. He taught me a lot and made me feel like a complete player," he says. Now it is rugby union that will benefit from just how complete Tahu has become.
After his mum remarried when he was 12, Tahu followed her and his stepfather, a policeman, to various police outposts in NSW to which he was transferred.
Then a loner, Tahu admits he found it hard to make friends in the various towns he lived: Bourke, Wilcannia, Grafton and Byron Bay. He needed mates. He needed stability. He also needed a pathway out of the traps of drugs, alcohol and crime that are inherent in an outback stricken by drought and depression.
So when a life of stability and promise beckoned, Tahu seized the opportunity, and his mum agreed to let him go. So began a journey to the Warrina Hostel in Dubbo and then the Kirinari Hostel in Newcastle, where his footballing prowess was recognised at a crucial stage of development, leading him ultimately to become the marquee name he is today.
It wasn't that Tahu didn't want to live with his Aboriginal mother, who was born on a mission in Bourke; nor with his Maori father, Tom, from Matamata near Rotorua on the North Island of New Zealand.
"It was hard as a young kid to make new friends. I got sick of moving back and forwards," Tahu told the Herald. "I was trying to adapt to a new life all the time … new schools and meeting new people. As soon as you got used to making friends it was time to go again and then start again from scratch."
Tahu admits his own quiet demeanour had something to do with that struggle. Then again, keeping his head low had its benefits - he managed to avoid earning the attention of the schoolyard bullies.
"I probably came across as a shy sort of kid. I enjoy my own company. I am not really an open person, a loud person," he says. "You always get bullies, but I never really got caught by any because I kept to myself."
Tahu, who has switched from rugby league to union and is poised to play his first Super 14 game for NSW against the Hurricanes next week, is candid about what he feared would have happened to him if he had not made that request to his mother.
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