'Win-win': Wallabies and Roosters great hails code swap

Sydney Roosters legend Russell Fairfax is lauding the club’s Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii-Mark Nawaqanitawase player swap as a “win-win for both codes” as the two superstar converts soar to new heights.

Nine months after losing Suaalii to Rugby Australia on a $5 million, three-year deal in March 2023, the Roosters raided Nawaqanitawase from the Wallabies and NSW Waratahs with a lucrative two-season counteroffer.

The respective coups continued a cross-code war stretching more than a century, since rugby league snared two-Test Wallaby Dally Messenger before the 1908 establishment of the ARL.

Both rugby and league have been littered down the years with successful cross-code transitions but never before have two converts become arguably superior players upon their switch, like Suaalii and Nawaqanitawase have.

Breaking from tradition in the long-running code feud, Roosters coach Trent Robinson last week applauded rugby for producing great talent and invited other rugby stars to make the leap to league.

“There’s some things that we can learn from the freedom of their (the Wallabies’) play,” Robinson said after another Nawaqanitawase hat-trick took the former Waratah to the top of the NRL’s season try-scoring list with 24 four-pointers in 23 games.

“And if any other ones want to come over, then they’re more than welcome because I do think we get to exhibit the skills that they get to practise sometimes a bit more (in rugby).”

Fixture

Rugby Championship

Australia

26 - 28

Full-time

Argentina

All Stats and Data

A hero of the Roosters’ 1974 and 1975 premiership-winning sides after debuting for the Wallabies as a teenager, Fairfax acknowledged how rare the success of both Suaalii and Nawaqanitawase in their new codes had been.

Playing his first rugby game since high school, Suaalii was named player of the match in the Wallabies’ rousing spring tour win over England at Twickenham last November and has continued to excel in 2025.

With a career-long highlights reel crammed into a single season and packed with freakish tries, Nawaqanitawase has also been an instant sensation since crossing codes full-time after also playing rugby sevens for Australia at the Paris Olympics.

Now Nawaqanitawase looms as one of the X-factors of the NRL finals series ahead of the Roosters’ sudden-death showdown with Cronulla on Saturday, just hours after Suaalii again lines up at outside centre for the Wallabies against Argentina in the Rugby Championship.

“It’s been a win-win for both codes,” Fairfax told AAP.

“They were good players with their other clubs, but they’ve joined clubs that are a better team, and that makes them look better.

“Mark has always been a good player but he couldn’t do all the stuff he did in his previous team.

“That’s why he’s thriving at the Roosters. They do more for him. The Waratahs were going pretty average the last couple so he didn’t have as much help.

“So he’s been able to shine with the Roosters. They’ve found a bloke who could play, so they start to feed him.

“Don’t get me wrong, he’s still got to do a fair bit of work to do to score tries, but they normally set him up.

“They know they’ve got something special so as long as he runs to a hole or things like that, they’ll just find him.”

As the first fullback to go up for the high ball, Fairfax has a soft spot for Suaalii.

“He was going well for the Roosters, but he’s been a real stand-out for the Wallabies,” he said.

“It’s a game he’s learnt from a young age and he’s just doing these things that they don’t normally do.

“So he’s bringing a different dimension to rugby. He’s got a running game too, he’s big and tall and fast and he’s got aerial skills.

“Just a huge talent.”