Jun 14, 2026
[Part 5/5]
Back at Redfern, the final hooter confirms what the run of play had threatened: Souths 42, Silktails 0, and the inaugural Manoa Thompson Bowl is won by the NSWRL foundation club in red and green.
The young Fijians look spent and, for a moment, young – a group of exhausted young men a long way from their village and a long way from contending for a finals campaign.
Then the two teams gather. Manoa Thompson steps in to present the bowl to Souths and the fraternity between both teams is clear to see.
In the change room the team is sternly addressed by coach Master Duve and then Steve Driscoll.
Steve then introduces his close friend Manoa Thompson, father of Jarryd Hayne and the godfather to Steve’s daughter Shawnee.
It’s family first at the Silktails.
Manoa Thompson makes a speech.
A prayer and then a beautiful Fijian hymn follow with the players in a circle.
A unique rugby league moment and its highly emotional.
Win lose or draw the Singing Silktails are looking forward to the future.
It is easy to look at a 42-0 scoreline and see a team out of its depth.
It is harder to see what is actually being patiently built: a club that has chosen the slow, generational road of growing its own, when the fast road of importing mature players was right there.
Petero Civoniceva said it best: this Silktails project has stopped being about kicking a ball in a park, and became about infrastructure, identity, dignity and opportunity.
And the Silktails’ new youth-focused policy, although it has hurt their results, is planting a tree that will provide shade for generations of future Fijian players.
Not all of these Silktails will make it to the NRL.
Three or four, at best, may get the golden ticket. There is no guarantees that any will make it.
But all of them will go back to their villages with their lives positively changed – with a trade, an education, a bank account, a full season of stories and the physical benefits of twenty-six battles in their legs.
And most importantly a band of brothers that sings whether it wins or loses.
The quiet truth that the Silktails have learnt through bittersweet experience is that there are no shortcuts.
It takes the whole village to raise an NRL player.
Toso Silktails!
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[Ends]
