Warrington Wolves have signed Wests Tigers prop forward Thomas Mikaele, who has been released from his contract with the Tigers to join the Wolves immediately.
Mikaele, 24, has signed a two-and-a-half-year contract with the Wolves after spending the last three and a half seasons with the Tigers, playing 66 first-grade matches.
Mikaele was born in Auckland and is of Samoan descent.
While attending the famous Rugby League nursery, Keebra Park State High School in Queensland in 2015, he was twice selected for the Australian Schoolboys, when he was also selected for the Queensland Under-18s team that defeated New South Wales. He joined Wests Tigers in 2017 and made his debut in Round 1 of the 2019 season against Manly at Leichardt Oval.
At the end of that season Mikaele was diagnosed with the eye condition keratoconus, an eye disease that affects the structure of the cornea, resulting in loss of vision.
In 2020 he told the NRL website: “I couldn’t see about 15 metres in front of me so a ball coming to me was hard to catch at times or something happening further up the field. I didn’t realise I had eye problems beyond just needing glasses. I started having a lot of handling errors from last year and then over the off-season. I noticed at training I couldn’t see as far even with my contacts in.”
The club sent him to specialists who treated the condition, enabling Mikaele to perform effectively again at first-grade level.
The Wolves recently released prop forward Rob Butler to Wakefield Trinity and they are now thought to have released forward Ellis Robson to Newcastle Thunder as coach Daryl Powell begins to reorganise his playing squad.
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