© Provided by The GuardianPhotograph: Mark Evans/Getty Images
Joseph Suaalii must be growing accustomed to seeing his face on the back pages of newspapers.
Had he not mid last year, when reports emerged South Sydney had signed him on a four-year deal worth $2m, the King's School year 12 student would have shortly thereafter when Rugby Australia entered into a pricey crosscode tug of war for his signature, which ultimately ended up on a contract with the Sydney Roosters.
Suaalii is 17, and we have heard this story before. Whenever the terms "prodigy" and "teen sensation" find their way into news stories it is usually a sign a sport has identified its next big thing. The key element to that proposition is that the tense is future, and Suaalii has not yet arrived.
When he does so is up to the NRL, which must decide if it will grant the Roosters an exemption to its rule that players cannot make a first-grade debut until they turn 18. ARL Commission chairman Peter V'landys has said cases will now be assessed individually and his organisation is in the process of doing so while Suaalii, who turns 18 on 1 August, has not been named in the Roosters' team for Saturday's season opener against Manly.
© Photograph: Mark Evans/Getty ImagesJoseph Suaalii during his two-try trial outing for the North Sydney Bears against Canberra's reserves in February.
In the interim, the public commentary has reached almost saturation, with figures in the game variously stating that the 196cm, 98kg utility back is "physically dominant, really well-balanced, very strong and fit" (Trent Robinson), a "physical beast" who "can already do what 10-year first-graders wish they could do" (Cooper Cronk) and "aware about the hype . but I don't really focus on that" (Joseph Suaalii).
Perhaps this is not such a big deal. After all, very young debutants are not a new phenomenon. The NRL's well-known precedent is Jordan Rankin, who debuted for Gold Coast aged 16 in 2008, before NRL restriction was introduced.
In football, Sam Kerr, Ellie Carpenter and Mary Fowler - the 2019 World Cup "prodigy" - were all 15 when they made their Matildas debuts. But there is no escaping the complexities in coupling adolescence with professional sport.
Suaalii's two-try debut for Roosters feeder side the North Sydney Bears late last month beguiled some media to the point of declaring his performance "proved he belongs among men, not boys". Less easily answered is the question of what actually constitutes a man and a boy, both physiologically and psychologically.
Andrew Clark, who is head of sports science for Football Australia and oversees high performance for the Socceroos and Olyroos, says a key element of his job is evaluating the physical development of young football players yet to play professionally and gain the "street smarts" that only comes with experience.
"Men's bodies develop at different rates," Clark tells Guardian Australia. "Often we can see an athlete who physically looks like they're big enough to be a man, and this can happen quite young for some players, especially players of Polynesian heritage.
"But the physical strength that's required is often not developed underneath the size of that player, and that continues to develop as they continue to mature. So how do you assess whether a player is physically ready to play a brutal game like rugby league? That falls to the group of professionals who are looking after that player, obviously under the rules of the game.
"The game has to make a decision on what age is appropriate, and that's just on balance, but only the professionals who work in the closest circle can really understand whether a player is ready - whether they're 18 or 21 or 22. Some players are physically young developers, but psychologically they're a bit later developers."
Earlier this month, Billy Slater voiced a similar concern. "It's a really tough one," Slater said. "If we let Joseph play, then he goes out there and injures himself because he's not ready in terms of his [development] - it's a really dangerous precedent to set."
This week, the Melbourne Storm, Queensland and Kangaroos great added: "I don't think you can make rules for some and rules for others in this one." It is true that a blanket rule of this nature exists for a reason: a duty of care to protect all players under the age of 18. On that basis, it should not be waived for one player, even if Suaalii is more physiologically or psychologically mature than others who match him in years.
Such a restriction would have delayed the start of a stellar career belonging to Brad Fittler, who debuted for Penrith at 17 and remains New South Wales's youngest-ever State of Origin player (aged 18 in 1990). The same can be said for dual international Israel Folau, also 17 when for his first Melbourne Storm appearance, and Newcastle's Sione Mata'utia, who last year became Australia's youngest-ever Test representative.
Fittler, for one, said he "was ready". That was perceivably not the case for the likes of Rankin, prop Adam Ritson - who suffered brain damage during a game and retired at 20 - and former South Sydney player Paul Mellor.
When the rule was introduced in 2015, the NRL's head of game strategy and development, Shane Richardson, said the decision had been influenced by the cases of five emerging rugby league players who had taken their own lives in the preceding two years.
"The information we've gathered about player welfare is that decisions should be made about their future when they turn 18," Richardson said at the time. "People will give you anecdotal evidence of Brad Fittler playing etc, but it's a small minority compared to the welfare issues of the greater majority."
Professor Caroline Hunt, who is head of the clinical psychology Unit at the University of Sydney, says such sudden media scrutiny would be a challenge for a person of any age.
"But we know that physiologically young people's brains and their cognitions don't fully develop until they're in their early to mid 20s, so he's at that developmental stage where he's still finding himself," Hunt tells Guardian Australia.
"Younger people are often much more sensitive to the opinions of others . he could be vulnerable to that. I mean, I don't know, he might be very mature and very capable. But just generally, it's the age group that you would expect those things to be more of an issue."
Souths coach Wayne Bennett was one of the first to call out that intense external expectation. "I know the publicity he's copped in the past couple of days is not what I would want for my 16-year-old," Bennet said last July. "We still don't know how good he's going to be, and all of a sudden he's got this huge burden of expectation placed upon him. It's not healthy for anybody that's in that situation."
Cooper Cronk felt the Roosters were well placed to assess Suaalii's playability. "The Roosters, clubs like the Storm, the good clubs don't put kids in unless they're physically and emotionally and mentally ready," Cronk said.
Still, of all 32 NRL club chief executives and chairmen polled by the Sydney Morning Herald last week, 74% said Suaalii should not be granted an exemption to play before his 18th birthday, a result V'landys put down plain-old rivalry.
Roosters teammates have approached the issue with caution, with James Tedesco describing him as "a freak" but adding: "There's a lot of external pressure. I feel for him a bit. I want him to enjoy training with us."
Clark, while emphasising he does not work in rugby league, says determining an athlete's readiness for any sport with 100% accuracy is difficult, but that a failure to do so risks cutting short careers, either due to injury or psychological damage.
"The scariest thing is that we can lose a lot of talent to whatever game we're playing if we introduce them before they're ready," he says. "Nobody wants to cut short the career of a young player. In all sports, special players don't come along that often."