The 21-year-old, who was NRL Rookie of the Year last season, will link up with Wests Tigers at the end of the 2024 season.

He will join fellow Fiji internationals Api Koroisau and Jahream Bula, as well as current Panthers teammate, Jarome Luai.

Long after the crowds are gone, and Leichhardt Oval has emptied, the rubbish that has accumulated is funnelled out of the ground through the VIP area.

The run-down facilities are the outward sign of Leichhardt Oval’s home team, the Wests Tigers, who trace their origins back to the very start of the NRL. They have been in total disarray for years.

It has been a long slide over two decades. The Wests Tigers – the result of an amalgamation between the Balmain Tigers and Western Suburbs Magpies in 1999 – last won a premiership in 2005.

They last made a finals series in 2011. And despite the support of serious corporate figures – billionaire developer Harry Triguboff is a supporter, as is International Olympic Committee vice-president John Coates – their administration has been poor.

The performance of the club last season, when the Wests Tigers sank to the bottom of the ladder for a second year in a row, was the final straw.

A review, conducted by former NRL chief financial officer Tony Crawford and businessman Gary Barnier, led to the dismissal of the entire board and the resignation of the club’s long-serving chief executive, Justin Pascoe.

And it revealed plenty of issues lurking under the surface, far from the poor recruitment, retention and coaching of players that most supporters blame for the Wests Tigers’ terrible performance on the field.

Cheap sponsorship deals, misleading membership figures, and the absence of a strategy to grow its fan base have made it difficult for the club to change its fortunes – the company posted a $2.2 million loss in its latest financial year.

Wests Tigers also have the lowest amount of membership and corporate revenue of the nine Sydney-based clubs.