The humble beginnings of Maika Sivo, rugby league’s newest Fijian flyer

He used to pay 50c to watch Benji Marshall on TV and now Maika Sivo is using his chance in the NRL to help build a new life for his people back in Fiji.

Maika Sivo of the Eels dives over to score but it is disallowed during the Round 1 NRL match between the Penrith Panthers and the Parramatta Eels at Panthers Stadium in Sydney, Sunday, March 17, 2019. (AAP Image/Craig Golding) NO ARCHIVING, EDITORIAL USE ONLY

• LATE MAIL: All the latest team changes

• PROMISE: Hodgson’s pledge to his late brother

If he wanted to see the Benji Marshall Step, little Maika Sivo had to first find 50 cents.

For this kid from the tiny Fijian village of Momi, he had no TV.

Not much of anything, really.

Which meant anytime this young Wests Tigers fan wanted to see his side play, he had to hitch a ride into Nadi, coins jangling inside his shorts pocket as he went, then search out whichever family home was choosing to show the game.

"Growing up, I really looked up to Benji," Sivo recalls. "So we'd go into town, or the school to watch games.

"People would make money from it, too … make you pay 50c to go in."

But last Sunday?

Well, in that same little village Sivo once left to find an NRL game, there are now three houses with cable TV.

LISTEN NOW! The Matty Johns podcast is now live. He is joined by Paul Kent and James Hooper to debate the big issues including Taumalolo’s impact, the Dragons’ big Widdop problem and to tell some hilarious war stories.

And every one overflowing as their 25-year-old cassava farmer made his NRL debut in the season opener against Penrith.

"There were almost 100 people in my uncle's house," Sivo explains. "Some inside, some outside … they were looking in through the windows."

And come Sunday afternoon, against Canterbury, it's on again.

Those same three houses set to overflow -- and, wonderfully, without any cover charge -- as locals cheer this Fijian flyer who, only four years ago, was farming cassava and taro when a holidaying Gundagai rugby league official signed him up -- simply for how athletic he looked.

And if filling houses isn’t enough, the new Eels cult figure is fixing them too.

Every fortnight, sending money home for a carpenter to completely overhaul his parent's place.

They came in droves to watch Sivo’s NRL debut.

"Almost finished too,” he says. “Should be ready for them to move in next week.”

Elsewhere, Sivo also spends part of his downtime watching video of that countryman who once owned the same cult crown at Parramatta, Semi Radradra.

But as for comparisons between the pair?

"I feel bad, ey," the winger grins. "Semi's done so much. I just want to be Maika, create my own thing."

Albeit, with a hint of Semitrailer, right?

"I still watch stuff of him when he was here," the rookie continues. "Take a bit from that and put it in my game, a couple of highlights."

Sivo sends part of his salary home every two weeks.

Apart from having never played rugby league when he joined Gundagai in 2015 -- "I didn't even know the rules" -- Sivo also knew nought about the little bush town that has effectively made him.

"I have no idea where it even was," he laughed. "I got off the aeroplane and my Aussie parents drive us down there.

"It was six, seven hours. We sleep, wake up. Sleep, wake up.”

And as for first impressions?

"Cold," he grins. "It was cold."

Up against the Bulldogs Sunday, Sivo admits he is now itching to cross for that first NRL try.

"But I still have heaps to learn," he says. "I just want more games … more games."

Originally published as The humble beginnings of Maika Sivo, rugby league’s newest Fijian flyer