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But instead of representing the Warriors, he will be competing against his former team as part of the Sydney Roosters.<\/p>\n
A talented junior, Ioelu was destined for stardom from a young age and by the age of 10, he was already recognised as one of the best young prospects in the Auckland Rugby League competition.<\/p>\n
Known for his craftiness and composure around the ruck, he quickly drew the attention of the Warriors recruitment staff, and before long, he was brought into the club\u2019s pathways system alongside Ali Leiataua, Francis Manuleleua, Keano Kini and current Tricolours teammate Salesi Foketi.<\/p>\n
His rise gained further momentum when he was named in the Under-16s squads for both the New Zealand Kiwis and Toa Samoa – before ultimately deciding to represent the latter with Deine Mariner and Joash Papalii.<\/p>\n
PVL weigh’s in on controversial Dogs win | 06:34<\/p>\n
And it wasn\u2019t long before other NRL clubs began circling, especially after being named one of the players of the match in a one-off game between the Warriors and 2019 Under-17s Harold Matthews Cup premiers, the Newcastle Knights<\/p>\n
\u201cThey had an open invitation in New Zealand. My agent said come along to the training and Daniel Anderson (former Roosters Head of Recruitment) was there and just did some drills and played a game,\u201d Ioelu told foxsports.com.au.<\/p>\n
\u201cI was signed with the Warriors but I wasn\u2019t fully locked in. When Newcastle came over to verse the Warriors, they saw me play that game and Daniel wanted to confirm a deal.<\/p>\n
\u201cThen I was able to get out of the Warriors one and I\u2019ve been signed to the Roosters ever since.\u201d<\/p>\n
After a strong junior representative career, which saw him make back-to-back Grand Finals in the Under-19s SG Ball Cup and Under-21s Jersey Flegg Cup, Ioelu bided his time in the lower grades before making his NRL debut last season.<\/p>\n
Ioelu is a former New Zealand Warriors academy product.Source: News Corp Australia<\/p>\n
However, his debut almost came sooner.<\/p>\n
\u201cI injured my ankle and fibula, so I was out for that whole (2024) season, but just the way it was panning out, I thought it was possible I could have debuted that year,\u201d Ioelu added.<\/p>\n
\u201cHonestly, that road to recovery was tough. I was out for the whole year and then I found out I had brain stress then I was out again.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor brain stress, you don\u2019t really know how long you\u2019re out for. It\u2019s just how long your brain wants to heal and just got to give it some rest.<\/p>\n
\u201cThere\u2019s also other injuries and you think to yourself is this still worth it? But I\u2019m a big believer in God and I live in Jesus and I feel like people going through it, you never know what God has in store for you. <\/p>\n
\u201cIf you just keep persevering, putting your head up and keep marching forward, you never know what your days will bring.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"In 2019, Benaiah Ioelu was contracted to the New Zealand Warriors. Seven years on, in a full-circle moment,…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":514829,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-514828","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514828","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=514828"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/514828\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/514829"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=514828"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=514828"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=514828"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}