It seemed like a good idea at the time. But by the end of the AFL’s Israel Folau circus, even Andrew Demetriou was scrapping to find any positives from the two-year, 13-game, two-goal, $2 million exercise, widely acknowledged as a mistake for all involved.
“Israel Folau has been a terrific ambassador for our game … and his courageous decision to give AFL football a go has helped inspire many children, particularly in NSW and Queensland, to play and watch Australian football,” said the then-league chief.
Josaia Delana was drafted as a category B rookie by the Giants.Credit: Rhett Wyman
It sounded ridiculous at the time.
Twelve years later … is this what vindication looks like? Maybe?
That all depends on how good a player Josaia Delana turns out to be. But him just being on the Giants’ list is a minor victory, in and of itself.
Delana, 18, is probably what Demetriou had in mind when he threw a bundle of cash at Folau to coax him out of the NRL. He is a sort of human milestone of the AFL’s incursion into rugby league heartland, the spoils of an uphill code war.
Karmichael Hunt and Israel Folau in the AFL – yes, that really happened.Credit: Getty
Born and raised in western Sydney to a Fijian father, Delana was so obsessed with rugby league as a kid that he once high-fived Billy Slater and refused to wash his hand afterwards. Even though he was a Queenslander.
“I was like, ‘He touched my hand!’” he says. “It’s Billy Slater, man – he’s the GOAT.”
His father, Josaia Sr., also played rugby league at a good level, including juniors for Parramatta, reserve grade for South Sydney and, at one stage, semi-professionally for the Montpellier Devils in France.
“I was five. I loved it,” Delana said. “My dad literally played rugby league, and that was it. His lifestyle was the life of a professional athlete, just not including the pay – his accommodation was paid for, he was paid enough to put food on the table for the family.”
Delana’s childhood was spent code-hopping between rugby league for the Kellyville Bushrangers and Baulkham Hills Bulls, rugby union for his school, Oakhill College, and soccer for the Blacktown Spartans.
Rugby league, though, was his first and strongest love.
“I was a halfback,” he said. “I loved telling the boys what to do, steering them around, side-stepping everyone. If you don’t step, then you get crunched. I learned that the hard way.”
Josaia Delana.Credit: Rhett Wyman
That was the only problem. Delana’s slight build meant that some games were more enjoyable than others.
“The boys that we [played], the big Polynesian boys … it just made the game not fun,” he said.
“I would pray on game day that the game would be postponed or cancelled because of the rain. It was just hard. That’s why I ended up playing touch football and Oz-Tag – because there was no tackling. I loved it, and I thrived … because it didn’t have that physical factor.
“Whereas rugby league, attack was fun … but as soon as you had to kick on the last and the big boys would come off the back fence, it was just, let them run straight through, let them score. No point putting my body on the line.”
Aussie rules was so far off Delana’s radar that it may as well have come from another planet. None of his mates played it, nobody he knew watched it, and there were no goalposts anywhere near where he grew up in Blacktown.
Until one day in 2010, when it was revealed Folau would be leaving the Brisbane Broncos for … a team that didn’t yet exist, in a code he’d barely even heard of.
“I was in primary school. I think I was 11,” Delana said. “One of my mates in the year above was family friends or cousins with Israel Folau, and I saw this thing that he was quitting NRL, which he was an absolute freak at, to go play AFL.
“And I was like, ‘what is even AFL?’
“I sort of related to him (Folau), I guess, in the sense of his athletic capabilities … that’s why when he went to AFL, I was pretty intrigued, because it was such an odd move to play a sport that was so foreign.”
Delana’s curiosity was further piqued by a memorable visit to his school by former Giants stars Phil Davis and Nick Haynes. Soon enough, he decided to have a crack himself, enrolling in the club’s nascent academy program.
Both of his parents were supportive.
“My friends, a little bit of a different story,” he said.
“In Melbourne, you know, you play AFL … it’s just what you do. You live it, you breathe it, you do that. Whereas here, that’s rugby league. So for me to play AFL, it was looked at as, like … ‘What are you doing? You’ve got a good shot at league. Why would you do AFL, something that none of your mates play?’
“They’re coming around, now that I’ve been drafted.”
Indeed. Plucked from the Giants’ academy as a category B rookie (the same draft mechanism which allowed fellow western Sydney products Jack Buckley and Kieren Briggs to crack the AFL), Delana looms as an exciting long-term project player.
He’s a small pressure forward with big ambitions – and a wicked side-step, which he hopes to show off at the top level soon enough.
“It doesn’t feel real, that I’ve been given this opportunity,” he said.
“I just feel like it’s such an honour that I’m one of the very few that’s chosen out of western Sydney to be able to represent the Giants. Being that I am a Western Sydney kid, and I’m representing my home … it just means that much more.”
