Mosese Fotuaika, a talented Wests Tigers prop, died at the age of 20. JUST DAYS AFTER THE BREAKING NEWS ABOUT BEN BARBA, the rugby league fraternity was shocked anew by the death of Mosese Fotuaika, a young Wests Tigers prop.
JUST DAYS after learning of Ben Barba’s death, the rugby league community was shocked again on Thursday night by the loss of young Wests Tigers prop Mosese Fotuaika.
According to a NSW police spokeswoman, officers from the Holroyd area command were dispatched to a townhouse in Merrylands at 6.50 p.m. AEDT last night.
They verified that a 20-year-old guy was discovered dead inside the premises and stated that the death was not considered suspicious.
A report for the coroner will be drafted.
Fotuaika was a member of the Tigers’ under 20s team that won the premiership in 2012 and has been promoted to the club’s NRL roster for this season.
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The last day of summer was sticky and hot. At Wests Tigers’ headquarters in Sydney, players sweated through their final training session before the start of the 2013 National Rugby League season. Mosese Fotuaika was lifting weights.
The 20-year-old had a long, handsome face and the solid build of his Tongan forebears. He was bench-pressing 90kg. This wasn’t much of a challenge. “He could lift 160kg” says Joel Luani, who partnered him in the gym that day. But Fotuaika suddenly gasped. “It was a split-second thing,” Luani says. “He went to lift and then he couldn’t.”
Team physiotherapist Peter Moussa could see that Fotuaika had torn a pectoral muscle, an injury that could sideline the up-and-coming prop for several months. Still, Moussa was surprised by Fotuaika’s reaction. He was normally a stoical young man. “I said, ‘Is it the pain? Is that why you’re crying?’ He said, ‘No. It’s just stinging a bit.’
“The physio fitted him with a sling and tried to comfort him. I put his forehead on my shoulder and my hand around his neck. I said, ‘It’s OK, buddy’.” There is a lingering bewilderment in Moussa’s voice. “You know, it was just strange,” he says. “It was really strange.
Fotuaika’s friend Ben Murdoch-Masila offered his injured mate a lift home, doing his best to cheer him up. He remembers thinking he wasn’t getting through: “He was really upset. He said, ‘Mate, let’s go for a beer’. I said, ‘Your injury’s too fresh. It will interfere with your healing’.”
In any case, the two didn’t have much time. Murdoch-Masila was expected to join the rest of the Tigers squad for a recreational cricket match that afternoon, and Moussa wanted Fotuaika returned to his care. “I asked him if he wanted to get changed at my house,” says Murdoch-Masila. “He said, ‘No, I want to go home’.”
Murdoch-Masila dropped Fotuaika at his rented townhouse at 12.45pm. “I told him I’d come back to pick him up in about half an hour.”
When Murdoch-Masila and another player returned to collect him, Fotuaika didn’t answer the door. Nor did he pick up his phone.
His team-mates were puzzled but not particularly concerned – maybe he had gone out or fallen asleep. They called Wests Tigers coach Mick Potter, who told them to continue on their way to the cricket match.
“I said, ‘It’s not your problem to find Mosese’,” recalls Potter, who, along with Moussa, tried repeatedly to phone him during the next few hours.
Fotuaika’s body was found in the garage by his girlfriend, Shanice Alaiasa, when she got home soon after 6.30pm on February 28.
“Shanice rang me, screaming into the phone, ‘He’s gone’,” says Nicole Heu, Alaiasa’s mother. “I said, ‘Shanice, calm down. What’s happened?’ She said, ‘Mosese is gone, mum’.”
Alaiasa, 20, is tall, dark-haired, resolutely composed – and well into the third trimester of her pregnancy. A law student, she deferred her studies and returned to the Gold Coast to live with her family while she awaits the birth of a child who will grow up without its father.
“When I packed up the house, I searched everywhere for a note somewhere,” she says. “But at the same time, I know Mosese, and I know he’s not going to spell out his emotions. Even though I was looking, I didn’t expect to find anything.” She pauses. “It’s just frustrating, having a big question mark.”
What drove Mosese Fotuaika to end his life? A successful young footballer injures himself in the gym then goes home and commits suicide: it doesn’t make sense to the people who loved him.
Jo Hallett is deputy principal of Keebra Park State High School on the Gold Coast, which has a league programme and a close relationship with Wests Tigers.
