Inside the deal: How Wakefield Trinity kept Roger Tuivasa-Sheck deal a secret from rival clubs

It took Wakefield Trinity less than a week to pull off one of Super League’s most remarkable transfer deals.

The capture of Roger Tuivasa-Sheck will go down as one of the most seismic in the club’s history, and what makes it all the more impressive is that their rivals didn’t even know the Kiwi megastar was on the market.

While planning for 2027, one of Wakefield’s key focuses was on landing a major star that would take them to the next level, but they never expected it to be the man they got.

“We wanted a point of difference,” Recruitment Manager Ste Mills told Love Rugby League. “It happened really sharp, if I’m honest, I don’t think most of the coaching staff really believed me when I first brought it up.”

So how did Wakefield manager to keep the deal under the wraps?

“It only took about five or six days, which helps,” Mills explained.

“It’s just communication with agents. I got told when I took this job on that it’s all about relationships. You’re waiting for the day that a Roger Tuivasa-Sheck comes up. Fortunately, he has the same agent as Jazz Tevaga, he knows how we’ve helped his transition and we’ve built up a great relationship.

“In this game, it’s all about opportunity and every deal we do we try to wrap it up as soon as we can. I was pretty keen to do it before anyone else found out, to be honest. Communication between myself, Daryl and Matt means we’ve got the facilities to move quickly when we decide to move on a player.

“It took about five or six days. The initial communication, we arranged a call with Roger and his agent then thrashed out a deal. A lot of the time we’ll chat and an offer gets sent the same evening. He wanted to commit early so he could focus on the Warriors and focus on the move. That obviously worked for us, too.

“There were a couple of sleepless nights trying to get the deal done. The morning the deal got done, I’d had around two hours sleep and was up at around 1 or 2 in the morning, needless to say it was worthwhile!”

For Mills, there is no doubting what kind of impact Tuivasa-Sheck will have on the pitch, but perhaps just as importantly, off it too.

“Roger will and already has had an impact. We know how big a deal this is in putting Wakefield on the map.

“Right at the start of the journey, Mike McMeeken was our first one. That initiated a roll-on effect and got people believing in the project. I think Jazz was the next one, signing a regular starting NRL player. Roger is a whole new level. The whole of Australia and New Zealand know who Wakefield are, and he’s a former All Black too, which covers a large amount of interest beyond rugby league. We have definitely started to see the impact of that.

“It’s already initiated more conversations, which is good. Obviously, more players have been offered, but it’s been more around the conversations it has brought up with people across the world who are interested in how we got it done.”