As a junior he played several years with Jack Cogger and Luke Yates.
His natural style is to run a lot from dummy half.
In the juniors he was very effective at playing 40 or 50 minutes off the bench and usually ran over 100 metres out of dummy half - more than most forwards.
He was quite a powerful, heavy set guy as a junior.
He was captain and star player in a Newcastle Knights under 20s side that included Jake Mamo, Sione Mata'utia, Joe Tapine, Lachlan Fitzgibbon, Josh King, Luke Yates, Jack Cogger, Brock Lamb and he played reserve grade with most of those guys and the Saifiti twins, Joe Wardle etc etc. He won a minor premiership in under 20s and a premiership in reserve grade with those guys.
In the seniors they wanted him to play 80 minutes, pass the ball a lot more, and make his 40+ tackles, and he slimmed down, got a lot fitter, and ran a lot less.
He has been bouncing from club to club - Knights, Manly, Brisbane - for the last 3 years, and doing a good job for those clubs, but his style of running the ball too much for most coaches liking and not really being fit enough to last a full 80 at NRL level means he can't find a home in the NRL.
In the ESL I expect he'll have the fitness to play 80 if he needs to, but you might want to use him for shorter minutes and let him run more. He can be very effective at that.
