SEN host Joel Caine has revealed how he hilariously first landed at an NRL club.
Caine, who first earned an opportunity with the St George Dragons in the mid-90s, was first signed for the club due to a case of mistaken identity.
Joining SEN’s new show All Talk with Hello Sport, Caine explained how he had a poor trial at Kogarah but was surprisingly offered a two-year deal.
“I was the captain of the group three under 16s team, and there was a kid on the bench who was a back-up half, if you like,” Caine said on SEN’s All Talk with Hello Sport.
“He and I get an opportunity to go down to Kogarah for an open trial for the Dragons.
“I just cracked under pressure, I wanted it too badly, I played really, really bad, but my mate from Taree has a blinder.
“I’m leaving and I’ll never forget this, I haven’t yet hit the road leaving Kogarah and I get a call, ‘We’d love to sign you for two years’, I was so relieved.”
Now a couple of months into his time at the club, Dragons officials sat Caine down to figure out why the player they initially signed didn’t look like the player that was in the midst of his first pre-season.
“It’s January now, I’ve been there since October and they pull me aside and go, ‘If we’re brutally frank, we’re actually thinking about sending you home’,” Caine said.
“I was gutted, so they took us back to the trial and played the trial tapes, they pressed play and said, ‘What do you make of this run?’, I said, ‘Oh it’s great’.
“They said, ‘How do we get you back to that?’, I said, ‘That’s impossible’, they said, ‘Why?’, I said, ‘Well you’ve just shown me half an hour of tape of my mate from Taree’.”
As it turns out, Joel’s friend from Taree that the Dragons thought they signed ended up being future international dummy-half and Newcastle legend Danny Buderus.
“They said, ‘What, well who the f--- is this?’, I said, ‘My mate Danny Buderus … he’s signed at the Knights’,” Caine said.
“We’re short, and you could probably tell now, but we were little blokes, brownish hair and it was a mix-match trial.
“They’d signed him and they said, ‘Well how do we fix you?’, I said, ‘Well I’m not a hooker for starters’, so then they put me to fullback and away it went.
“Later it turns out he only wanted to play for the Dragons Danny Buderus, but he gets a last-minute trial to go to the Knights and the rest is history.”
After being moved to fullback, Caine would eventually make his NRL debut for the Dragons before playing for both Balmain and the Wests Tigers across a 97-game first-grade career.
The incredible story behind how @JoelCaine landed at the Dragons!
— SEN Sydney 1170 (@1170sen) August 19, 2022
All Talk with @HelloSportPod!
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