Powerful athletes storming across the field, muscled, tough and fast – it’s the image most of us have of professional rugby league players. Phillip Borell (Ngāti Ranginui, Ngāti Tūwharetoa), however, has seen another side of the picture: of young men vulnerable to homesickness, depression, economic insecurity and even suicide.
In his University of Canterbury PhD thesis, completed last year, Borell shone a light on the experiences of 10 Polynesian professional rugby league players and found that they were significantly different from what we see on TV.
“At least three of my [research] participants spoke about having deep depression when they got over to Australia, because they went over at 16 or 17 years old,” he says.
“One of the guys I spoke to, he’ll rack
