Mark, we fancy you as the Messiah. Don’t be a naughty boy

October 24, 2026 — 5:00am

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Mark Nawaqanitawase? Bring it in tight. It’s about your carry-on, about whether you will or won’t – and you do or don’t – want to play for the Wallabies.

Mate, you’re about as good a winger as we’ve seen. You do things we’ve never witnessed done on the football field. If you don’t play for the Wallabies next year, you’ll be missed.

But when the news came through that you were coming back to rugby, it never occurred to any of us that you wouldn’t be desperate to turn out for Australia? (#FFS!)

And that is why, like most, I dismissed out of hand the notion that you might turn out for Italy or Fiji instead, as had been floated. I wrote as much to you last week in this column. I said, love, I said pet, I said, look: “If you don’t turn up, Mark Nawaqanitawase, well, don’t get us started. We choose to believe this malarkey about you playing for another country next year is managerial manoeuvring. If so, stop him. He’s embarrassing you.”

But now the news this week.

It wasn’t the manager, and you dinkum are prevaricating.

“I still have more to prove. I don’t know where that’s going to be, but wherever I go, I feel like I have a lot to give the team,” you said on The Good, The Bad & The Rugby podcast. “Whoever it’s for, I want to go and win it. I don’t know who it will be for, but time will tell.”

Yes, mate. Because Gawd knows, you are a much better chance of winning the World Cup with Fiji or Italy than you are with the Wallabies, for whom you’ve already played – as well as having already had the honour of representing Australia at the Paris Olympic Games in Sevens rugby. You’ve also had the honour of representing the Kangaroos in rugby league.

But now you’re not even sure you want to turn out for Australia? Hang on, aren’t you the same bloke who, since playing so superbly for the Roosters, has made it clear that you feel tremendous loyalty to them and will likely make your way back to Moore Park? Great. But can’t Australia itself get some of that loyalty? You know, the country where you were born and raised? The country where you learned and then polished your fabulous skills?

Has the NRL and all the adulation – all of it deserved, I not only concede, but have contributed to – turned your head? What happened to the humble hard worker who was so delighted to be in the green and gold of the Wallabies you could hardly raise........

© The Sydney Morning Herald