Former Manly hooker Manase Fainu says he helped foil a plot to have Jarryd Hayne stabbed while the former NRL stars served time in a Sydney prison.
Fainu was released on parole on Friday after being jailed for the stabbing of a Mormon youth leader at a church dance in Sydney’s south-west in 2019. The former Manly hooker has not played in the NRL since he made a semi-final appearance for the Sea Eagles in 2019.
The 28-year-old served his eight-year sentence at several facilities including the Geoffrey Pearce Correctional Centre in Berkshire Park, south of Windsor. It was here that he crossed paths with Hayne, the former Parramatta Eels fullback who was found guilty of two charges of sexual assault stemming from an incident in Newcastle in 2018.
After a series of trials and appeals, the NSW Court of Criminal Appeal quashed Hayne’s convictions in June 2024. The DPP ultimately decided not to pursue a fourth trial.
Fainu said there were rumblings among the inmates of a plan to knife Hayne upon his arrival at the Geoffrey Pearce facility in 2023.
“We looked after him at Windsor,” Fainu said.
“We found out a day before that he was coming into the jail. There were talks already, the Aussie boys were saying, ‘When he comes in, we’re going to blade him 1-2-3’. So there were boys already planning it up.
“He’s an islander, and islanders stick together in jail. So two other boys … said ‘We’re going to back him, he’s an islander. He’s still fighting his charges … When he comes in, we’ll sit him down and ask if he did it or not’. So when he landed, we told the boys, ‘If anything kicks off with Haynesy, you’re going to kick off with the other islanders’, and there were a few of us at Windsor at that time.
“So Haynesy came through and we sat him down and asked, ‘Did you do it or not? Just tell us the honest truth’. And he said, ‘No, I didn’t do it’. So we just took his word for it. We backed him … the charges [subsequently] got dropped.
“The islanders looked after him. As soon as they got the word across, all the [other] boys backed off.”
Corrective Services NSW was contacted for comment.
Hayne expressed his gratitude to Fainu for looking out for him while behind bars.
“Given my profile and charges, I knew I would receive unwanted attention while I was in jail,” Hayne said in a statement.
“It was a blessing that me and Manase ended up at the same place. Manase and others had my back because they were convinced of my innocence and I’ll always be grateful for that.”
Fainum who made 34 first-grade appearances for Manly between 2018-19, hopes to embark on an unlikely NRL comeback. The former Tongan international said he had witnessed several unsettling incidents during his time behind bars.
“You get scared in there,” he said. “You’re nervous, it’s nerve-wracking in there. You see some stuff where you’re like, What the ‘f’? Where the hell am I?’ You know what I mean? ‘Where did I land?’ I saw stabbings and all that. It’s normal in there … it’s a crazy thing inside.”
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