Toafofoa Sipley (born 5 January 1995) is a Niue international

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

footballer who plays as a for the

Manly Warringah Sea Eagles The Manly Warringah Sea Eagles are an Australian professional rugby league club based in Sydney's Northern Beaches. The team colours are maroon and white, while their namesake and logo is the sea eagle. They compete in Australia's premier rug ...

in the NRL. He previously played for the New Zealand Warriors in the

National Rugby League The National Rugby League (NRL) is an Australasian rugby league club competition which contains clubs from New South Wales, Queensland, Victoria, the Australian Capital Territory and New Zealand. The NRL formed in 1998 as a joint partnership ...

Background

Sipley was born in

Auckland, New Zealand Auckland (pronounced ) ( mi, Tāmaki Makaurau) is a large metropolitan city in the North Island of New Zealand. The most populous urban area in the country and the fifth largest city in Oceania, Auckland has an urban population of about It ...

and is of Samoan and

Niue Niue (, ; niu, Niuē) is an island country in the South Pacific Ocean, northeast of New Zealand. Niue's land area is about and its population, predominantly Polynesian, was about 1,600 in 2016. Niue is located in a triangle between Tong ...

an descent. He played his junior rugby league for the Richmond Rovers, before being signed by the New Zealand Warriors.

Playing career

Early career

From 2013 to 2015, Sipley played for the New Zealand Warriors' NYC team. On 5 October 2014, he played in the Warriors' 2014 NYC Grand Final win over the Brisbane Broncos. He captained the side in 2015. On 2 May 2015, he played for the Junior Kiwis against the Junior Kangaroos. On 3 June 2015, he re-signed with the Warriors on a 2-year contract.

2016

Sipley graduated to the Warriors' Intrust Super Premiership NSW team in 2016. In Round 9 of the

season A season is a division of the year based on changes in weather, ecology, and the number of daylight hours in a given region. On Earth, seasons are the result of the axial parallelism of Earth's tilted orbit around the Sun. In temperate and po ...

, he made his NRL debut for the Warriors against the

St. George Illawarra Dragons The St. George Illawarra Dragons is an Australian professional rugby league football club, representing both the Illawarra and St George, Sydney, St George regions of New South Wales. The club has competed in the National Rugby League since NR ...

2017

In June, Sipley signed a two-year contract with the

for the 2018/2019 seasons.

2018

On 19 May, Toafofoa Sipley made his club debut for Manly Warringah against the

Melbourne Storm The Melbourne Storm are a rugby league club based in Melbourne, Victoria in Australia that participates in the National Rugby League. The first fully professional rugby league team based in the state, the Storm entered the competition in 1998 ...

in the 24-4 win at AAMI Park. Sipley made a total of 4 appearances for Manly in the

2018 NRL season The 2018 NRL season was the 111th season of professional rugby league in Australia and the 21st season run by the National Rugby League. The main competition, known as the 2018 Telstra Premiership due to sponsorship from Telstra, featured 16 te ...

as the club endured one of their worst ever seasons finishing 15th on the table and narrowly avoiding the wooden spoon. On 27 October, Sipley made his debut for

against

Italy Italy ( it, Italia ), officially the Italian Republic, ) or the Republic of Italy, is a country in Southern Europe. It is located in the middle of the Mediterranean Sea, and its territory largely coincides with the homonymous geographical ...

. In this match, he scored a try as Niue lost 36–32.

2019

Sipley made 10 appearances for Manly Warringah in the 2019 NRL season as the club reached the finals. Sipley played in Manly's elimination final victory over Cronulla-Sutherland at Brookvale Oval.

2020 & 2021

Sipley made no appearances for Manly in the 2020 NRL season. In round 16 of the 2021 NRL season, he scored two tries for Manly in a 66-0 victory over Canterbury. Sipley played 20 games for Manly in the 2021 NRL season but did not feature in their finals campaign which saw them reach the preliminary final stage before losing to South Sydney.

2022

Sipley made 19 appearances for Manly in the

2022 NRL season The 2022 NRL season is the 115th season of professional rugby league in Australia and the 25th season run by the National Rugby League. Teams The lineup of teams remained unchanged for the 16th consecutive year. This became the second longest s ...

as the club finished 11th on the table. He was one of seven players involved in the Manly pride jersey player boycott.

References

External links

Manly Sea Eagles profile
{{DEFAULTSORT:Sipley, Toafofoa 1995 births Living people Junior Kiwis players Manly Warringah Sea Eagles players New Zealand people of Niuean descent New Zealand sportspeople of Samoan descent New Zealand rugby league players New Zealand Warriors players Niue national rugby league team players Richmond Bulldogs players Rugby league players from Auckland Rugby league props Rugby league second-rows