Why Melbourne has been waiting a generation for someone like Sua Fa’alogo

Source : ABC NEWS

Sua Fa’alogo has been waiting quite a while for his chance to be Melbourne’s fullback, but nowhere near as long as Melbourne has been waiting for someone like him. 

Over their almost 30-year existence, the Storm have never been short of stars, especially at number one.

It makes Fa’alogo, who starts at the back for Melbourne tomorrow in their season opener against the Eels, the heir to a storied bloodline.

Wearing the jersey that was first donned by Robbie Ross, then elevated by Billy Slater and recently vacated by Ryan Papenhuyzen — with talents as diverse as Greg Inglis, Cameron Munster and Jahrome Hughes all pulling it on in the spaces between — is a lot to live up to.

But this is a dawn that has been beckoning ever since Fa’alogo’s NRL debut back in 2023, when he moved like he was firewalking, scoring a double that made him seem a star of tomorrow.

That tomorrow has now arrived, and when you combine the weight of history and the possibilities of the future, it gives Fa’alogo the look of a chosen one, and that’s what Melbourne — not just the Storm, but Melbourne itself — has been waiting for.

Fa’alogo is a Victorian junior, a Broadmeadows and Northern Thunder man to be precise, and while he isn’t the first local boy to play for the Storm, he has a chance to be their first homegrown star, which always shines brightest on the horizon.

Son of Thunder 

They’re proud of their own in the Victorian league scene and deservedly so. It’s a long way to the top from the edge of the rugby league world.

It’s hard to carve out room in Sherrin country, but their successes dot the landscape — three-time premiership winner Jeremy Smith spent some time with the Altona Roosters, as did former English international Gareth Widdop, and journeyman prop Jamayne Taunoa-Brown is another alumnus.

Young Tonumaipea and Richard Kennar, like Fa’alogo, were Thunder boys who made it all the way to the Storm and beyond. Dean Ieremia did as well, only from Sunbury Tigers — the same club that produced Canberra winger Sione Finau and Wests Tigers prop Fonua Pole.

Pole only started playing rugby league because the games were on Saturdays and Sunday was for church, a story which is not so uncommon.

According to Henry Ene, Northern Thunder coaching coordinator and 20-year veteran of Melbourne rugby league, close to 80 per cent of players are of Pasifika or Maori background.

Ene has borne witness to the slow but steady progress the game has made in Victoria, with the Storm putting a heavy focus on local growth in recent years.

“It’s definitely growing from where it was ten years ago,” Ene said.

“The implementation of Jersey Flegg and SG Ball and the girls’ rep teams, plus the state league centre here in Broadmeadows, has really allowed the game to grow in Victoria.

“Rugby league was very small when it came to club footy when I first came here, very limited.

“I think rugby union was more on the scope than league but that’s changing now.”

The first Melbourne-born and raised junior to make the top grade was Mahe Fonua, the pride of the South Eastern Titans out Dandenong way, who made his NRL debut late in 2012.

It was just a few months after that, on an afternoon like any other, when Ene spotted a skinny nine-year-old who’d recently moved to Melbourne from Samoa and could run as the wind blows.

“I just saw him kicking a ball at training. He’d just kick it and run after it and I saw the speed on him,” Ene said.

“I called him over and asked if he played rugby league, and he said, ‘No, I play footy.’ His English was a bit limited — he wasn’t long over from Samoa.

“I spoke to his parents and said, ‘I’d really like to coach him.’ They gave their approval and that started the story of Sua Fa’alogo.

“The speed stood out from that first night.”

The first of his kind 

In all likelihood, more Victorian products will join Fa’alogo in the Storm’s top squad before long. As he rose through the grades after signing with the club in 2021, a system came with him.

Fa’alogo won the Storm’s feeder club player of the year award in 2022 and 2023 — an honour that no longer exists, with Melbourne now opting to keep their juniors in-house instead of farming them out to the state leagues.

After several years of sustained junior development, the Storm now fields standalone teams in the under-17s, under-19s, under-21s and the NSW Cup.

Their under-21s team won the premiership last year, with a team that was roughly 40 per cent Victorian, and the under-17s team is strictly locals-only.

Right now, the products of that work are trickling to the top — Hugo Peel, another fullback, is the pick of the current bunch.

But Fa’alogo, who is both the last remnant of the old world that spawned him — even at 22, he’s been around long enough they’ve already named a junior tournament after him — and the first piece of the new that has risen in his wake, which makes him the bridge that could turn that trickle into a torrent.

The Storm have found greatness in all the corners of the rugby league universe over the past quarter century, but never have they found treasure so close to home, and while it’s still not a guarantee that Fa’alogo will be gold, he sure is glittering like it.

Since his debut in 2023, he’s put up 14 tries in 22 matches, with several long-range efforts showing that speed, and shorter ones where he moves so smoothly the defenders may as well be catching smoke.

The noise out of Melbourne is that Fa’alogo’s grit has matched the grace. In the great Storm tradition, he was not given the fullback job but earned it, with coach Craig Bellamy noting how Fa’alogo had increased his endurance over the summer and Cameron Munster praising his defensive communication. 

He will take time to match Papenhuyzen’s combination with Munster, Harry Grant and Jahrome Hughes, and he still has much to prove, but his brief career has already shown that Fa’alogo can ride the lightning like few others.

After back-to-back grand final losses and following an uncertain summer marked by Eli Katoa’s injury, Papenhuyzen’s departure and the unsuccessful pursuit of Zac Lomax, the Storm need a player like that — a world shaker, a sword dancer, an explosive piece of human dynamite.

In a sport increasingly obsessed with certainty and precision, Fa’alogo is a jagged edge, the kind that wins hearts and minds as much as football games, and that is why he has as much potential as a symbol as he does a player.

Grant, Hughes and Munster are already legends of the club, as all the purple heroes were before them, and each of them found a home in Melbourne, where they earned love and renown for their great deeds, and while three kings make for a crowded court, there’s always room for a prince of the city.

Fa’alogo looks like he can reach those highest highs, and he is by Melbourne, for Melbourne, and that’s a combination the Storm have been waiting for their entire existence. 

It will begin in earnest against the Eels, and expectations will be high from the start, as they always are in Melbourne, as they look to conserve their imperious round 1 winning streak.

Ene will be there, along with his kids, at least 30 Thunder players, officials and old boys, and you can expect that number to keep rising. They all know Fa’alogo because he’s still always around.

He’s a regular at Thunder training, where the kids chase balls just like he did all those years ago, only half of them already pretend they’re him.

Fa’alogo is on the cusp of history and in pursuit of greatness in the Storm tradition, and he is the football pride of Broady — but he still one of them, still of the place he calls home. 

That makes a difference you cannot see but only feel, and it’s a feeling that follows Melbourne’s own wherever he goes. 

“Sua comes back to the club every so often to give back to the junior grades; it’s good for them to see someone like that excel — it’s special for him, the community and his family,” Ene said.

“He’s a humble kid who knows his roots and knows his identity. It’s always great to see him back at the club — we never see him as a superstar, we see him as the same kid from Broady.

“He’s trained hard for this, and there’ll be some pressure on him replacing Papenhuyzen; he’s got big shoes to fill.

“But I had a word to him before the pre-season camp the Storm did in Geelong, and just said ‘be yourself’ because that always helps you play good footy. He is destined for this.”