Corey Oates and Tevita Pangai show the secret of NRL recruiting is what’s in a man’s heart

Corey Oates and Tevita Pangai Jnr – a current and former Bronco in very different situations have uncovered the secret to rugby league recruitment.

Corey Oates and Tevita Pangai Jnr.

In the turbulent wash-up after their grand final loss, the Broncos have been given a vivid insight into the minds of the desperate players they need and the disinterested ones they must avoid.

We always knew player recruiting was a delicate, complex art but the unmasking of the inner emotions of Corey Oates and Tevita Pangai Junior over the past few days shunted us to both ends of the scale.

Oates was snubbed from the Broncos grand final side but he’s not done yet. He twice broke down in tears on stage at the Broncos ball and has agreed to take a cut price contract in a bid to fight his way back.

He’s not certain of doing so but just the sight of him busting his gut at training has its own dividend because he so desperately wants to be part of everything about the club.

Pangai, by contrast, admitted before his latest boxing bout in Townsville on Saturday that he was never a team player in league, that playing the sport was forced on him as a child and that he had lost interest in the code.

The only shock about it was it was no shock at all.

Tevita Pangai Jr during his tight win against Frank Amato.

At one stage the Broncos were pouring $700,000-plus into Pangai each year in the hope he’d breach the gap between potential and performance. Then Canterbury did the same before sending him off to second tier football. Neither club ever felt they truly “had’’ him.

Then, in the most baffling decision of all, the NSW Blues picked him for his one and only State of Origin on the back of him previously declaring he was fired up and desperately wanted to play Origin football … for Queensland.

Go figure.

It just shows the trick of recruiting is as much about working out what is in a man’s heart as whether his silky offload will work under pressure. There’s no rule that says you have to love the sport you are best at.

Pangai is gambling everything – $700,000 a year to precise – to become a boxer and the jury is still out on whether he will make it.

The case for him is that while he is no Muhammad Ali he is certainly very watchable.

There’s just something magnetic about watching giant men with cement chins go at each other at full pelt like he did when he snared a very close decision against Frank Amato on Saturday night.

Corey Oates is hoping to return with a bang for the Broncos. Picture: NRL Imagery

Pangai has a lo-o-o-o-ng way to go before he can take on any boxer with any serious credentials but looks fitter than he was when playing rugby league and he appears to have found the passion in boxing he never found in league. It has to help.

Strangely, the case against him includes the novel argument that he may not be hated enough to draw massive eyes to his work live and pay per view in the way that arch villains Paul Gallen and Anthony Mundine drew people who wanted to watch them get beaten up.

“Gallen made a lot of money but he already had villain status,’’ said Grantlee Kieza, Australia’s most respected boxing writer.

“It’s a tough road. Pangai has compared himself to Anthony Mundine but Mundine grew up in a boxing family and made a lot of headlines before he switched and got 6000 people to his first fight in Sydney.

“Very few make big money. I knew a very good boxer called Greg Page who was Mike Tyson’s sparring partner for a lot of years and even put Mike on his backside. His last fight made him $1500 and he got brain damage.

“People don’t realise how hard it is. Even head knocks are a big issue. In rugby league you get taken off after one head knock. In boxing you can get hit 50 times in the same fight.’’

Originally published as Corey Oates and Tevita Pangai show the secret of NRL recruiting is what’s in a man’s heart