More than anything, Apa Twidle wishes he could thank his late coach Paul Brown for setting him on the journey to an emotional NRL debut with Parramatta.<\/p>\n
Five years before scoring two tries against Wests Tigers on Easter Monday, Twidle was a homesick 16-year-old who’d moved from New Zealand to Queensland to chase his NRL dream.<\/p>\n
“My first weekend I called my mum and said, ‘Get my flight back’. It was tough,” Twidle said.<\/p>\n
Twidle’s manager had put him in contact with local footy coach Brown, but the young Kiwi knew no one else in Brisbane.<\/p>\n
Brown coached Twidle in the Queensland Rugby League’s Cyril Connell and Mal Meninga Cup competitions, as well as at local club Souths Acacia Ridge Magpies.<\/p>\n
On the side, Brown stood in as a father figure for Twidle during what the 21-year-old now calls “one of the hardest times” of his life. <\/p>\n
“I lived with him in Brisbane, he trained me hard, he looked after me, didn’t ask for anything in return,” Twidle said.<\/p>\n
Brown remained in Twidle’s life after he moved to Sydney to take the next step in his career, joining Parramatta’s SG Ball team and eventually graduating to NSW Cup.<\/p>\n
But, in late August last year, in the week his daughter was born, Twidle’s world was shaken when he received news Brown had passed away after he had been privately battling cancer.<\/p>\n
“I didn’t even get him to have a photo with my daughter. That hurt me quite a bit,” Twidle said.<\/p>\n
“He didn’t tell anyone how sick he was. That’s just the type of guy he was, he didn’t make anything about himself.”<\/p>\n
Seven months on and Twidle was named on the Eels’ six-man bench to face the Tigers in round five, although he appeared a long shot to actually take the field.<\/p>\n
Twidle told his mother not to bother flying over from New Zealand for the game \u2013 given he’d likely only play in the event of multiple injuries.<\/p>\n
But when Sean Russell (head knock), Jonah Pezet (hamstring) and Bailey Simonsson (ankle) all went down, Twidle heeded the Eels’ call.<\/p>\n
Twidle scored from his first touch as an NRL player with a freakish put-down on the right wing, before helping the Eels draw level with a second try.<\/p>\n
Ng\u0101ruaw\u0101hia-raised Twidle scored from his first touch as an NRL player with a freakish put-down on the right wing. (Source: 1News)<\/p>\n
Luckily, Twidle’s mother Pura hadn’t listened to him and booked a last-minute ticket to fly to Sydney on Monday morning.<\/p>\n
“When I went to my mum [after full-time], we didn’t even say anything, we just started crying,” Twidle said.<\/p>\n
“Tears of joy, obviously. It was pouring out, that emotion. It was like, this is what we done it for.”<\/p>\n
An AC joint injury will prevent Twidle from lining up against Gold Coast on Sunday.<\/p>\n
But each time coach Jason Ryles gives him another first-grade game, Twidle will write Brown’s initials on the strapping tape around his wrist, just as he did against the Tigers.<\/p>\n
It’ll mean the coach will always be with him on game day, just as he was from the moment Twidle arrived in Australia to take a chance on himself.<\/p>\n
“That’s why I write his name with me. He’s with me everywhere. He’s with me all the time,” Twidle said.<\/p>\n
“I just want to do everything for him. He’s the reason why I’m here.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"More than anything, Apa Twidle wishes he could thank his late coach Paul Brown for setting him on…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":370143,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[85,9001,111,139,577,69,213],"class_list":{"0":"post-370142","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-australia","9":"tag-hamilton-waikato","10":"tag-new-zealand","11":"tag-newzealand","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-nz","14":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370142","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=370142"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/370142\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/370143"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=370142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=370142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=370142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}