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Plans in place to entice Joey Manu back to league with eye-watering deal
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PNG Chiefs GM of Football Michael Chammas is hopeful that former NRL superstar Joey Manu will return to rugby league to join the expansion franchise when his contract with Racing 92 runs out at the end of the season.
Inside centre Manu, 30, can play outside centre and wing, and won back-to-back NRL Grand Finals in 2018 and 2019 with the Sydney Roosters before leaving for Steve Hansen’s Toyota Verblitz in Japan’s Rugby League One in 2024.
He was looking to use Japan as a springboard to attract one of New Zealand’s five Super Rugby Pacific franchises to sign him but instead ended up in the French capital.
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Manu took his family to Papua New Guinea’s capital, Port Moresby, for a guided tour of the proposed facilities before reporting back to Racing’s state-of-the-art training facilities at Le Plessis-Robinson for pre-season training.
The Chiefs are hoping that Manu will be tempted into signing, with all salaries being tax-free, which Chammas admitted to Channel 9’s Wide World of Sports show 100% Footy has been a selling point.
“There are some big names. It’s been well documented that Joey Manu came to PNG a couple of weeks back and spent some time there with his family. He’s back in Paris at the moment preparing with Racing 92 for their season.
“So we’re hopeful that Joey wants to join, and by all reports he enjoyed himself over there. I think it’s a lot easier to convince them to come and join us when we’re selling them a dream.
“Everyone will talk about tax-free, and it would be naive to say that doesn’t get you into the conversation. And as a club we’ve got to be real around that.
“That’s a big factor for a player to come over there and set yourself up for life. Of course, it’s a developing country, but the people there are rugby league mad.
“They’re so hospitable, so friendly, and every time we’ve taken somebody over there, they’ve said the exact same thing to us. ‘We didn’t think it would be like this’,” he said.
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