Was it worth it Roger?
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By Scott MacLean
The end of the NPC also spells the end of the provincial representative careers for some players as well. Some will take their careers offshore, others will retire or return to club footy never to be seen on this stage again, and one or two will find themselves in the All Blacks this time next year, and on top of that the whole future of the competition is in some doubt as well.
But none of that applies to one player; Roger Tuivasa-Sheck.
When RTS announced he was switching from league and the NRL to union with the hopes of making the Rugby World Cup squad it seemed a brave move, pitching himself into a congested pool of outside backs with a limited time to be able to crack it. But he’d also been anointed the best player in the NRL courtesy of winning the Dally M Medal, had been good enough as a schoolboy at Otahuhu College to be a starter for the Blues U18s before shifting to Sydney and the Roosters, and it seemed that on the spectrum of converts he’d be much closer to Brad Thorn and Sonny Bill Williams than Benji Marshall.
On top of that, his fullback spot at the Warriors appeared to be in good hands with starlet Reece Walsh having assumed the mantle as the custodian of the #1 jersey.
But things went far from plan. Desperately needing game time with Auckland in the NPC to get his development up to speed, the “short, sharp” August 2021 Covid lockdown (that eventually dragged on past 100 days) scuppered that as Auckland’s season – along with North Harbour and Northland – was curtailed at just three games without RTS playing in any of them. That meant he went into Blues camp well behind an already steep curve and still without a defined position. Yet he made a reasonable fist of things after being shoehorned into second-five where hard running and defensive solidity are prized attributes. That campaign ended on a sour note with the table-topping Blues being squeezed to defeat by a typical Crusaders performance in the final, and RTS suffering the ignominy of being dragged soon after half-time in favour of journeyman Bryce Heem.
Despite that, Tuivasa-Sheck was selected in the All Blacks squad to face Ireland. While we know how that series turned out, RTS was named on the 23 for the decider and made his debut in Wellington, albeit at a time that had gotten beyond salvation for the All Blacks. Two further appearances came in the black jersey: off the bench against Australia at Eden Park and his first start, against Japan in Tokyo.
2023 has seen RTS struggle for more time with the Blues, appearing in just seven of the Blues 16 games before a belated move back to fullback during the NPC. But by then he’d already decided his future was back in the 13-man game, announcing in April his return to the Warriors for 2024.
As a union player he was far from a failure (and certainly not on the scale Marshall was), but even someone as gifted as RTS shows the difficulty of learning the intricacies of the other code at essentially the professional level.
Throughout it though, it’s been hard not to be impressed by his determination to succeed even when his struggles have been clear, even extending to his recent conviction for drink-driving and subsequent disqualification from driving.
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