Tahu signs a four-year union deal

A CLANDESTINE meeting in a city office block a month ago was the catalyst for rugby to pull off one of its greatest coups: signing Parramatta Eels NRL star Timana Tahu.

As workers were making their way home from work at 6pm on what appeared an ordinary Tuesday, Tahu and NSW Waratahs coach Ewen McKenzie were getting down to business.
The negotiations were so secretive that even the Waratahs players were blissfully unaware about the wheeling and dealing.

"Speaking to a couple of the guys last week we maybe thought there was a rugby league guy coming across, but we had no idea who it would be," admitted Waratahs fullback Peter Hewat.

Last Christmas the Waratahs were informed that Tahu may be interested in playing rugby next year and on January 2, NSW High Performance Unit manager Tony D'Arcy made contact with an intermediary acting on Tahu's behalf.

That led to McKenzie and Tahu's hour-long face-to-face meeting on February 20.

"The thing that interested me the most when I sat down and talked to him was that he had a clear interest in the game," McKenzie said.

The pair discussed what position Tahu would play if he joined the Waratahs.

"I think the centres is definitely where he wants to play and that is where I am definitely looking to play him," McKenzie said yesterday.

But the day after the February 20 meeting, Tahu threw the best dummy of the season – declaring that rugby was boring.

"We thought it was quite clever and we actually gave credit to the bloke that he didn't want the negotiations to get out in the media," said NSW Rugby CEO Fraser Neill. Three days later, D'Arcy met Tahu to go over contractual issues and what he was looking for.

"It was a carefully constructed operation with me overseeing, Darc driving it and Ewen covering the rugby side of things," Neill said.

The only player brought into the "inner circle" was Lote Tuqiri, due to his knowledge of Tahu from their days together in the NRL.

"I spoke to Ewen about it a couple of times," Tuqiri said. "It was kept under wraps because with the media hype that probably would have come along with it, he might have been scared off.

"It was very hard to keep it secret because there were rumours about a lot of players from rugby league talking to rugby union."

The following Monday, NSW officials contacted their ARU counterparts and Wallaby coaching staff began doing "background checks" on Tahu, looking at videos of his career highlights and analysing his playing stats.

Over the following two weeks a series of formal and informal meetings were held involving the general manager of the ARU's rugby union, Pat Wilson, along with John Connolly, Scott Johnson, John Muggleton and Michael O'Connor.

Wilson sat down with Tahu for the first time on Sunday, March 4, in a north shore coffee shop, and over the next two hours Wilson had a cappuccino while Tahu demolished two steak sandwiches.

"We then put some figures to him late last week via e-mail," Wilson said.

ARU contract manager Rob Smith spoke to Tahu over the phone at the weekend, where he was able to satisfy any of Tahu's queries.

On Tuesday at 6pm Tahu held a final 90-minute meeting at ARU headquarters, which included Wallaby doctor Martin Raftery giving him the once over before he signed a four-year deal with the ARU and NSW Rugby.