“They’ve shown a lot of love to me and I love all the fans. I couldn’t leave them. There’s always a soft spot for Wakefield, it’s my second home.”
“Jesus, it was emotional! That was the best feeling I’ve ever had.”
So said David Fifita, minutes after completing a farewell lap at Belle Vue, having completed his final home game before heading back home to Australia after seven years at Wakefield Trinity.
It had been the perfect end to his seven years in the city – the 18-6 win over Hull KR secured their Super League status, mere weeks after they had been bottom of the table, and Fifita kicked a late conversion (from a tricky angle, it must be added) to cap it off. After the game he joined the fans in the North Stand, as a bumper crowd serenaded their departing hero.
And yet nine and a half months later, the man they call the ‘Big Bopper’ is back, swinging his shirt over his head and once again drinking in the love of an adoring Belle Vue on a sunny Sunday afternoon.
Fifita is celebrating another victory, this time against Leeds Rhinos, and it is Wakefield’s first at home since that Hull KR game and their first anywhere all year long. From a farewell party, this one he calls a “welcome home party”.
Just why did he leave behind the new life he was settling into back in Oz, pack his boots and bright pink shorts, and answer Trinity’s SOS call?
“Mash (Wakefield head coach Mark Applegarth) sent me a message saying we’ve got a few injuries and there’s a place in our team if I’d come,” says Fifita. “I said ‘not really mate, I’ve just got a new life!’
“He said we needed a leader like myself, that I know how to get the boys hyped up before a game, those sorts of things. I could hear the passion in his voice. I was like ‘I’ll talk to my wife and see how that goes – you don’t have to win me over, it’s my wife you have to win over!’. But she said ‘if you’re up for the challenge, just do it’.
“It’s the challenge, that’s the reason why I came over. I’ve never been asked a challenge like this, winless for the whole season up until then. When I spoke to my wife she asked if I was up for this, and I just laughed at her!”
Fifita, who came through at Wests Tigers and spent a year in France with Lézignan before the Cronulla Sharks spell – featuring 19 NRL appearances – which preceded his move to Wakefield in 2016, called time on full-time rugby after his departure from Trinity.
Instead his new occupation was a youth case worker, something he was keen to do because of his own experience as a troubled youngster growing up in Blacktown, Sydney.
“I work with kids who are on the verge of going into jail, they’re pretty much on their last strike,” he explains. “I didn’t have the help when I was that young and causing trouble, so it’s something I want to do for the next generation.
“It’s what I’ve always wanted to do with life after footy, work with kids and try and give back anything I can. I can relate to them, causing trouble when I was younger. I was pretty much in their shoes, on my last chance, about to get locked up. I ended up moving six hours away from home to go down to Griffith (close to the New South Wales outback).
“I can relate to a lot of them, truly, what they’re going through. That’s what I wanted to do, help kids and show them that there’s more to life than getting in trouble.”
Fifita has managed to put his job on hold for three months to return to England. He also said goodbye for now to The Entrance Tigers, the semi-professional team he joined on the Central Coast.
“I was playing ‘A grade’ footy. It was good, a new team and culture. I got to play with my brothers. I got to play in front of family and friends. It was a good feeling to have family come watch you play footy every week. It was two nights a week training, more relaxed!”
Yet Fifita jumped straight back into Super League, pulling on the Trinity shirt again just days after flying across the world.
“It’s a massive step up going into Super League. I told them, ‘I’m A grade fit, I’m not Super League fit!’ But I take every game the exact same. Rugby League is what you make of it. I love playing footy, I love being on the field. Even I don’t know what I’m doing on the footy field, I just come on and see what I can do, play eyes up footy and have fun doing it.”
He played against Leigh Leopards at Magic Weekend, coming off the bench in the first half and making an immediate impact, if not in the way he might have expected. After a late shot on the floor from Ben Reynolds – a former Wakefield team-mate – Fifita remonstrated and in the ensuing scuffle, Reynolds aimed a punch that saw him dismissed.
“I knew I was going to cop a few shots and things like that. I’m the same player I was – I ain’t copping nothing like that!” he laughs.
But even with the man advantage (at one stage they played against eleven) Wakefield could not land any punches of their own and Leigh won 30-4, with embarrassing ease.
Fifita was not too worried – he was preoccupied with getting his own game up to speed, and settling back into the squad. After a week with the group, he was happy to put his stamp on things in the build-up to that Leeds clash.
He says: ”I had to put my body on the line and show the boys that I’m still here, it’s still me. I couldn’t really say much that week – you can’t just go in there and pull up blokes you’ve never met before. They’re a different bunch of boys to those I’ve played with previously.
“After that one game, I tried to put more influence on the boys, talking a lot more, and it’s rubbed off. I asked them to put in an extra 10 percent. If I can get that out of them, then it’s great.”
It certainly seemed to do the trick, as a team that had lost all 15 competitive games in the season – scoring an astonishingly poor 17 tries – beat Leeds 24-14.
Largely through injury, but in other cases form, just five of the players numbered 1-17 at the start of the year featured, yet their cobbled-together team pulled off that desperately-needed first win.
“With the team we put out, no one expected that score. But we had full belief in all the boys who were playing that they’d stand up and be counted,” said Fifita.
“Maybe Leeds came in, saw a team like us and thought it would be an easy ride. But they were on for a shock. We kept everyone tight and said everyone needs an eight- or nine-out-of-ten performance as a minimum.
“Everyone worked well as a team, we covered for each other. I couldn’t be more proud of the boys. We just have to keep building on that performance.”
That win ignited a relegation battle, with Castleford Tigers the side likely to be chased down if they can find a way out of the mire. It’s a fight made more personal for Fifita, who in his first weeks back in England has been living with Jacob Miller, the former Trinity captain now playing for Castleford.
He was jokingly told he couldn’t come home after beating Leeds – but it is a deadly serious battle that will only heat up in the weeks and months to come.
Both know that only too well, having been involved in previous close scrapes playing together in red, white and blue. In 2019, survival went down to the final day, Wakefield winning a showdown with London Broncos to relegate the capital club. Last year, they trailed Toulouse with seven games remaining before a late surge.
Fifita missed the former run-in through injury and says: “It was tough. I was playing the best I’d ever played, I was doing things that a front rower should never do. When that got taken away from me and it was out of my hands, I had to rely on the boys to bring it home.
“Last year I knew I was part of the squad. What was great was how close we became as a team. If you look from the outside in you’d think they were fighting with each other all week and everything like that, but it brings a team a lot closer.”
He is confident the same will happen to this year’s group, and certainly hopes for the same outcome considering what he has left behind. Not only his three kids, but his wife who is expecting a fourth in September: “We’re prepared for me to miss the birth. If (the relegation battle) comes right down to the wire, I’ll stay for the whole thing and try my best to get us out of it. It will be a tough time but it all happens for a good reason.”
That reason is simply Wakefield. Faced with losing their Super League status after 25 years, at an uncertain time on and off the field for the club, Fifita just had to come back and try to write one final chapter in his love story with Trinity.
“They’ve shown a lot of love to me and I love all the fans. I couldn’t leave them. There’s always a soft spot for Wakefield, it’s my second home.
“If and when we do get through this, I’ll remember this for the rest of my life.”
First published in Rugby League World magazine, Issue 486 (July 2023)
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