Early Life
Tana Umaga was born in Lower Hutt to Samoan immigrant parents, and grew up playing rugby league. Umaga played for the Wainuiomata Lions and rose through the ranks, making the Wellington U-16 and U-17 sides, and was eventually named in the Junior Kiwi side of 1991. That same year he signed with the Newcastle Knights but within three weeks was back on the plane to New Zealand because of homesickness. He never did play a First-Grade NRL game. In 1993 Tana's brother Mike, who played rugby union for Manu Samoa, persuaded him to take up rugby union in 1994. The brothers played on opposite teams in a Test match between Samoa and New Zealand in 1999 during which Tana Umaga scored two tries (the All Blacks won 71-13).
Read more about this topic: Tana Umaga
Famous quotes containing the words early and/or life:
“The setting sun is reflected from the windows of the alms-house as brightly as from the rich man’s abode; the snow melts before its door as early in the spring. I do not see but a quiet mind may live as contentedly there, and have as cheering thoughts, as in a palace.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“He can have this old life anytime he wants to. You hear that? Huh, you hear it? Come on. You’re welcome to it, Old Timer. Let me know you’re up there, come on. Love me, hate me, kill me,
anything. Just let me know it.”
—Donn Pierce, U.S. screenwriter, Frank R. Pierson, and Stuart Rosenberg. Luke Jackson (Paul Newman)