The PNG Chiefs have a staircase at their home base with a step for every player they sign, and for weeks the seventh step sat there marked as reserved. The rugby league public did the obvious arithmetic and decided it was Nathan Cleary. It was not. It is Joey Manu, on a two-year deal, returning to the NRL in 2028 after three seasons in rugby union.

Manu played 181 games for the Roosters and won premierships in 2018 and 2019 as part of a side that has produced very few players who could not be replaced. He was Dally M centre of the year in 2022 and took the Golden Boot as the best international player later the same year. He left after the Roosters’ 2024 finals campaign for Toyota Verblitz in Japan, then Racing 92 in France, and offered nobody any guarantee he would come back to the 13-man code at all.

The union chapter ends with an asterisk. New Zealand Rugby selects only domestically based players, and Manu’s French contract runs to the end of 2027, so the All Blacks jersey he grew up wanting was always going to stay out of reach. Signing with the Chiefs simply closes the door formally.

What he gives Papua New Guinea is spine flexibility. Look at the Chiefs’ as it stands and the outside backs are absurd Alex Johnston, Zac Lomax, Brian To’o, with Jarome Luai at six. Now look at the gaps. No halfback. Four forward positions unfilled. One recognised prop, the Englishman Matty Lees.

Manu is the signing that lets Michael Chammas and his recruitment staff be patient about that. He is genuinely equally effective at fullback or centre and can slot into the halves at a pinch, which means the Chiefs can walk into free agency on 1 November without a gun at their head over the number seven jersey. If they land a marquee halfback, Manu plays fullback. If they don’t, Luai and Manu can run a spine between them while a younger half develops. Very few players in the competition give a club that much optionality in one contract.

He also brings the less quantifiable thing an expansion club needs in year one, someone who has won things and knows what a functional environment looks like. The Chiefs are assembling a roster with tax-free salaries and enormous ambition, and there is a version of that story where the whole thing becomes a collection of well-paid individuals.

The risk is real enough. Manu will be 33 by the time this deal finishes, and he will arrive having not played rugby league since 2024. Three years is a long time away from the ruck speed, the wrestle and the defensive reads of an NRL edge.

But the Chiefs have not signed him to be their best player. They have signed him to make their next signings easier.