Hardest Tackle

West Coast Eagles superstar Nic Naitanui has had to deal with being different his whole life. Here he reveals how he came to realise that was something to celebrate

- Ben Jhoty

The schoolyard can be a tough place for anyone who’s a little different. Imagine then, what it was like for a tall, skinny Fijian kid growing up in Perth in the mid-nineties. With his rangy body, black skin and wild locks, the young Nic Naitanui could scarcely have been more distinct from his classmates. A tough place? Hell is another way to describe it.

The thing about being different, of course, is that it makes you a target. A uniquely vulnerable one at that. Because for those that don’t fit in, it’s never just the insults and abuse that have the capacity to cause harm. For the victim, names become arrows, jokes land like jabs, even a mere look is freighted with the power to wound.

“It’s a feeling more than anything,” says Naitanui of the effect barbs from schoolyard bullies had on him. “It’s a feeling inside you of worry or hurt. Someone doesn’t even have to say anything. It can just be a look that makes you feel a certain way because you’re different.”