'It was that close': How Kalyn Ponga almost moved to AFL
By Andre Ponga
A lot has already been said and written about Kalyn’s time at the Cowboys and it’s not the right time to go deep into that here. I want to talk about Kalyn as a person, not the footy player, and suffice to say the Cowboys wasn’t the right place for his development as a person.
When you lose a son, as Adine and I did, as parents you will do everything to ensure your remaining children are in a positive environment.
It’s true what has been said about how close Kalyn got to switching to AFL with the Brisbane Lions. It was that close that I’d say had the Cowboys not debuted him in the NRL finals series in 2016, he’d be running around for the Lions now.
We didn’t want to make any decisions with Kalyn until he got the right manager and that’s not a simple process. But we eventually found someone in Wayde Rushton, who Kalyn as an individual and ourselves as a family were happy with.
After Kalyn decided to go to Newcastle he still had another year left on his contract at the Cowboys and they weren’t going to let him go early, so he had to see that time out.
We felt from what we’d seen of the Knights system that it was going to be perfect for Kalyn because it was going to allow him to express himself and show who he was, not just as a footy player but as a person.
He has come out of his shell since being down here. He understands who he is and has become comfortable within himself.
He’s gone from being a teenager to a young man and we’re finding out who he is as an adult now. He got a bumblebee tattoo on his ankle as a way of representing Kacey. The bumblebee toy has a history of being popular with kids in New Zealand.
When we went back to live in New Zealand, it was as an emotional reaction to Kacey’s death. After five years there, when Adine fell pregnant with Kayley we planned to return to Australia after the birth, but then after the stroke we had to wait until she was well again.
It wasn’t going to be a problem for me to get work and with Kalyn now in his teens we wanted to put him in a position where he had his best chance to be successful in life.
I believe he could have done that in any one of a number of sports. League, obviously, union, AFL, even soccer. And he won the under-13 national championship in golf in New Zealand. That was a huge achievement by him.
But league is his game and we’ve seen what he’s done with it, with so much more to come if he keeps going the way he’s going.