Jesse Parahi turns back on career with Wests Tigers to return to sevens rugby

AN emotional jersey presentation at the Sydney Sevens convinced Jesse Parahi to turn his back on a fledgling NRL career and return to rugby in time for a crack at the Olympics.

Jesse Parahi

JESSE Parahi was a few months into his new career as a Wests Tiger when he was asked to present his former Australian rugby teammates with their Sydney Sevens jerseys.

He choked up mid-speech and not for the first time Parahi felt a powerful urge to pull a jersey on and run out too.

“My heart never really left sevens. I spent a lot of sleepless nights watching sevens tournaments, thinking about if I had done the right thing,” Parahi said.

“I always had that “what if” bug.”

Jesse Parahi has quit the NRL to make a return to sevens rugby.

Last week, Parahi squashed the bug. The 26-year-old quit rugby league and will be unveiled on Wednesday as a new signing for the Australian squad. Or perhaps it is a re-signing, given Parahi’s 33-tournament career as an Aussie sevens player only finished in November last year.

In a shock move, Parahi helped the Australian side qualify for the Olympics before switching to league; a code he’d also played until age 18.

The blond back rower enjoyed a strong off-season with the Tigers but an ankle injury on the eve of the first trial set back his chances for an NRL debut in round one, and further niggles saw him slip back into the NSW Cup roster.

All the while, that sevens bug kept bouncing around and the offer to present jerseys in Sydney set in train his eventual return.

“Sometimes you have to leave something to realise how much you miss it, and I saw it, he came and presented our jerseys before Sydney,” Australian coach Andy Friend said.

“You could just see when he walked out of that room, that day, you could see in his eyes how much it hurt him to be there.”

Parahi watched both days of the Sydney Sevens.

“I had a chat to Friendy after the final, and he joked about when am I coming back,” Parahi said.

Jesse Parahi training with the Wests Tigers.

“That I guess put it in my mind, even with the new coach, he was still interested. So it just stayed in my mind, it was still an option. I had a chat to my manager that this was playing on my mind a little bit.”

Parahi pushed on in league but with the Olympics only a few months away, he decided he had to act.

“There are not too many people who can say they’ve been to an Olympic Games so if I can be involved in that in any sort of way that’d be a massive honour. To make a good crack of it I have to do it now or never,” he said.

Parahi, who played at the 2014 Commonwealth Games, is armed with a huge engine but says he’ll have to strip some weight off to be in contention for Olympic selection. He is aiming to make the squad for the last two tournaments in London and Paris.

“He is going to be great for us. There are no guarantees but he will push people and he will push himself, and that’s only a good thing for the squad,” Friend said.

“He brings something a bit different to us, he has the experience and he has the physical style. And he has a passion and a belief to want to come back and have a go. You have to like that.”

Originally published as Jesse Parahi turns back on career with Wests Tigers to return to sevens rugby