His father, Josaia Sr., also played rugby league at a good level, including juniors for Parramatta, reserve grade for South Sydney and, at one stage, semi-professionally for the Montpellier Devils in France.
โI was five. I loved it,โ Delana said. โMy dad literally played rugby league, and that was it. His lifestyle was the life of a professional athlete, just not including the pay – his accommodation was paid for, he was paid enough to put food on the table for the family.โ
Delanaโs childhood was spent code-hopping between rugby league for the Kellyville Bushrangers and Baulkham Hills Bulls, rugby union for his school, Oakhill College, and soccer for the Blacktown Spartans.
Rugby league, though, was his first and strongest love.
โI was a halfback,โ he said. โI loved telling the boys what to do, steering them around, side-stepping everyone. If you donโt step, then you get crunched. I learned that the hard way.โ
Josaia Delana.Credit: Rhett Wyman
That was the only problem. Delanaโs slight build meant that some games were more enjoyable than others.
โThe boys that we [played], the big Polynesian boys โฆ it just made the game not fun,โ he said.
โI would pray on game day that the game would be postponed or cancelled because of the rain. It was just hard. Thatโs why I ended up playing touch football and Oz-Tag – because there was no tackling. I loved it, and I thrived โฆ because it didnโt have that physical factor.
โWhereas rugby league, attack was fun โฆ but as soon as you had to kick on the last and the big boys would come off the back fence, it was just, let them run straight through, let them score. No point putting my body on the line.โ
Aussie rules was so far off Delanaโs radar that it may as well have come from another planet. None of his mates played it, nobody he knew watched it, and there were no goalposts anywhere near where he grew up in Blacktown.
Until one day in 2010, when it was revealed Folau would be leaving the Brisbane Broncos for … a team that didnโt yet exist, in a code heโd barely even heard of.
โI was in primary school. I think I was 11,โ Delana said. โOne of my mates in the year above was family friends or cousins with Israel Folau, and I saw this thing that he was quitting NRL, which he was an absolute freak at, to go play AFL.
โAnd I was like, โwhat is even AFL?โ
โI sort of related to him (Folau), I guess, in the sense of his athletic capabilities โฆ thatโs why when he went to AFL, I was pretty intrigued, because it was such an odd move to play a sport that was so foreign.โ
Delanaโs curiosity was further piqued by a memorable visit to his school by former Giants stars Phil Davis and Nick Haynes. Soon enough, he decided to have a crack himself, enrolling in the clubโs nascent academy program.
Both of his parents were supportive.
โMy friends, a little bit of a different story,โ he said.
โIn Melbourne, you know, you play AFL โฆ itโs just what you do. You live it, you breathe it, you do that. Whereas here, thatโs rugby league. So for me to play AFL, it was looked at as, like โฆ โWhat are you doing? Youโve got a good shot at league. Why would you do AFL, something that none of your mates play?โ
โTheyโre coming around, now that Iโve been drafted.โ
Indeed. Plucked from the Giantsโ academy as a category B rookie (the same draft mechanism which allowed fellow western Sydney products Jack Buckley and Kieren Briggs to crack the AFL), Delana looms as an exciting long-term project player.
Heโs a small pressure forward with big ambitions – and a wicked side-step, which he hopes to show off at the top level soon enough.
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โIt doesnโt feel real, that Iโve been given this opportunity,โ he said.
โI just feel like itโs such an honour that Iโm one of the very few thatโs chosen out of western Sydney to be able to represent the Giants. Being that I am a Western Sydney kid, and Iโm representing my home โฆ it just means that much more.โ
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