‘He didn’t give in’: The rookie Waratah matchwinner who lost 25 kilos and won cult status

You can’t win a Super Rugby competition in round one, and you probably can’t lose one either. But in a middle-distance 19-week competition that is part-sprint, part-endurance race, you can still do plenty of damage to your chances by missing the start.

The three Australian sides in action on opening weekend (Queensland had the bye) all got off the line well, with a rare sweep of victories. Technically speaking, none of the performances from the Waratahs, Brumbies and Force would have had their coaches doing cartwheels, but an abundance of the bit you can’t coach - character - more than compensated.

Two - NSW and the Force - scored go-ahead tries at the death, and the Brumbies also came from behind in the last quarter to win in sweaty Suva, where the gauges read 30 degrees and 100 per cent humidity. Coach Stephen Larkham said it was a special day for the Brumbies, and little wonder: there are few harder places on planet earth to win a rugby game, and no Australian side had done so in 10 previous visits.

Larkham had extra reasons to smile, too, given he’d taken a strategic punt and left four Wallabies at home. But dotted with new faces, and led by cat-burgling flanker Luke Reimer, the Brumbies dug deep.

The dig-deep factor was evident in Perth too, and Wallaby utility Ben Donaldson provided a spectacular finish for a tenacious team that has too often struggled to ice wins.

Corey Toole of the Brumbies runs with the ball in Suva.Credit: Getty Images

The Waratahs were on the wrong end of that equation last year numerous times, and it killed their season. So a 79th-minute try to win at Allianz Stadium over a well-coached Highlanders team was a good way to purge lingering demons.

Or for those survivors of last year, anyway. The scale of the renovations at NSW under new coach Dan McKellar over summer has flown a little under the radar; seven of the match day 23 made NSW debuts, four barely played in 2023 due to injury and Andrew Kellaway hadn’t worn sky blue in seven years.

It wasn’t quite a knock-down rebuild but McKellar spent the off-season trying to bring together a group of ex-Rebels and dispirited Tahs, and via hard work on the training paddock and dojo mats, instil a bedrock of fitness and character.

“You’ve got to be able to roll your sleeves up and put your head in a dark place and be comfortable doing it,” McKellar told this masthead last September, with great prescience. “We’re going to be a team that wants to stick in the fight, in the 78th-79th minute ... to fight and compete for every scrap.”

Sifa Amone is mobbed by teammates after scoring the match-winning try for NSW.Credit: Getty Images

Speaking on Sunday, McKellar said there was plenty to work on but to have the character to score to win in the last minute, via a 16-phase assault on the Highlanders line, was pleasing.

“That’s what we have to have. We are never going to be perfect, rugby is not a game that allows you be perfect. It is built around a contest, so we have to have that fight,” McKellar said.

It was fitting, then, that the man who secured the win for the Waratahs with two tries was the little-known bench prop Siosifa Amone, one of those on debut.

The quiet 22-year-old tighthead, who is known as “Sifa”, hails from western Sydney but came through the Force’s academy and debuted for them in 2023.

Attracted by the “raw power” he saw on footage, McKellar made him one of his first recruits to be a back-up for Taniela Tupou. But after playing for Norths, Amone turned up to Tahs’ pre-season training weighing almost 150kg.

“I went through injury last year, and I went through mental battles, and my way of dealing with it was comfort food,” Amone told reporters in the pre-season.

The Waratahs staff, under new S&C boss Tom Carter, gave Amone the target of getting down to 125kg and his torturous pre-season began. Amone’s fight to get fitter and refusal to quit when barely able to move on shuttle runs soon made him a cult figure at the club. Players and staff cheered him on in training and as the weight disappeared, week-by-week, so too did the gap behind his teammates.

“He has worked incredibly hard, and made a whole lot of changes to his life and his lifestyle, and off the back of that he has just dropped 20-odd kilos and put himself in the frame to play Super Rugby. He didn’t give in, and when the others were on holidays over Christmas, he was in,” McKellar said.

Amone was named as Tupou’s bench back-up for round one, and apart from his family in the stand, no-one cheered more for Amone than Tongan Thor when the youngster scored a try from a neat line-out move in the 67th minute, and then the match-winner. Tupou has been a mentor to Amone.

“He sees a lot of himself in me, that’s what he told me,” Amone said.

McKellar sees something special in Amone, too.

“He has an opportunity and now he has to take it. Because I do see a player there with enormous potential. If he really wants it, he has attributes you can’t coach,” McKellar said. “It’s a great story, but only it’s the start line for him.”

The Waratahs have a bye before hosting the Drua next week in Sydney.