CLANCY OVERELL | Editor | CONTACT
The American sports star who launched the NRL season by blowing the Canberra Raider’s viking horn, Las Vegas Raiders defensive lineman Tyler Manoa, appears to have been over-exposed to professional rugby league players.
This comes after tens of thousands of Australian tradesmen and sports marketing professionals spend a long weekend enjoying one of the great tax-write-offs in modern history. The NRL Vegas Round.
In a deal with Nevada Tourism, the Nation Rugby League has locked in Las Vegas’s Allegiant Stadium as the venue for their opening exhibition round of the NRL for four years.
This means that any NRL fans who are looking to attend an overseas trades conference will be looking for one that takes place at the end of February until 2027.
And with nearly 50,000 overexcited Australians and utterly confused Americans in the stands for seven hours of pulsating NRL over the weekend, the culture of rugby league was bound to rub off on some of the local guests.
It seems that is exactly what happened to the fringe American NFL star who agreed to take part in the fanfare.
It is not yet known why the NRL couldn’t get a slightly more famous American celebrity to blow the Viking horn, and instead settled on a local off-season NFL player who doesn’t even have a Wikipedia page, but it seems they chose the right man.
NRL sources have since confirmed that Manoa was removed from the stadium following allegedly ‘Very NRL conduct’ in the corporate area.
In a series of events that sound like they could have taken place in Fortitude Valley or Bondi Beach, It is believed that the American was tasered in the men’s bathrooms and immediately ejected from the venue for ‘misbehaviour’.
Manoa was therefore unable to appear as a special guest in the Canberra Raiders locker room following their clash with the New Zealand Warriors, as he was already thrown out of the stadium, which also serves as his homeground during the regular NFL season.
This incident follows the public apology of two Canberra forwards who were ejected from their hotel over a drunken elevator brawl with blow up baseball bats.
While Tyler Manoa’s actions may jeopardised his career in the NFL, sources say that Canberra NRL coach Ricky Stuart is ‘open’ to letting him trial with Green Machine, and says his actions wouldn’t even warrant a suspension in the ACT.
