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PACNEWS
Josh Papalii. Picture: NRL.
Queensland prop Josh Papalii says he would turn his back on playing for the Maroons and Australia to represent Samoa tomorrow.
It’s a move which has the potential to reverberate across the international game like Jason Taumalolo’s switch to Tonga. The problem is, Papalii doesn’t have a Samoan team he wants to go back to.
“100 per cent I would [return for Samoa over Australia],” he tells foxsports.com.au. “There are different emotions. When I play for Australia it’s the country I was raised in.
When you play for Samoa you invest a lot more, because I’m representing my parents, it’s what I am [a Samoan]. It’s more than a team.”
Rugby league trailblazer Olsen Filipaina was one of the first Māori-Pacific stars of Australia s professional competition in 1980, leaving his home and everything he knew in Mangere, Auckland, to play for Sydney s Balmain Tigers.
He played 29 tests for New Zealand and more than 100 first grade games, but it came at a cost of with experiences of racism, cultural dislocation and depression.
Olsen said it was his love for his mother Sissie, and the women in his life, that helped him through it all.
Olsen and partner Leslie, freshly returned from the hospital with newborn baby Louise in 1981.
Photo: Supplied They were very important [to me]. We wouldn t be talking now, and people would be saying who is Olsen Filipaina if it wasn t for them, he said.