Phoenix rising: Sandor eyeing comeback with mates in Vegas
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Gladiators star Sandor Earl is among a handful of former NRL players looking to play in the NRL Vegas 9s tournament to be held on the eve of the historic season opening double-header at Allegiant Stadium.
Earl, who was Phoenix on the recently concluded season of Gladiators Australia, is a founder of Air Locker Training, which has entered a team in the Vegas 9s to coincide with the company’s launch into the North American market.
The former Storm, Raiders, Panthers and Roosters winger will be in San Diego to oversee the opening of the first overseas Air Locker Training studio and is keen to play in the team, which includes a number of former USA internationals and expat Australians.
Among them are Charlie Jones and Brock Davies, who were members of the USA Hawks team that played at the 2019 World Cup 9s in Sydney, and Australian Survivor contestant Sam Webb.
Jones is a former Titans under 20s player who started a business in Las Vegas showing tourists, including NRL stars, around The Strip, while Davies played in France before attending college in Denver and earning an NFL trial with New England Patriots.
Webb is an LA-based actor, who has appeared on Neighbours and Home-and-Away and was a contestant on the 2016 series of Australian Survivor before co-founding mental health charity Livin. He is also a co-founder of Air Locker Training USA.
“A couple of my best mates are involved in a master franchisee set up for Air Locker Training in the US and we are setting up the first studio in San Diego in February,” said Earl, whose last NRL season was in 2020.
“The boys and another guy who used to play rugby league here and with the USA team, Charlie Jones, have put the Air Locker team together just to get around what the NRL is doing in Vegas.
“I’m one of the partners, with Roman Brady and Mark Hughes, and I work within the brand too as the performance director, so I am going over there to get things going and go through a bit of an onboarding process.
“I’d love to play in 9s, it will be a good time with the boys in the team, so I am trying to make my schedule work so I can do it.”
Brooklyn Kings, whose team includes former Panthers forward Liam Georgetown, had been hoping Kiwis international Shaun Kenny-Dowall would also play but commitments with Hull KR ruled him out.
Other ex-NRL stars have expressed an interest in playing at the Vegas 9s, which is set to be expanded in future seasons after approaches from teams in Australia, England, Fiji, New Zealand and South Africa.
Jones said he hoped Earl would play but was confident the Air Locker team would be competitive against clubs from across the USA and Canada with or without him.
“As a team we are not relying on Sandor, but I know that he wants to play and obviously if he does that would be a boost,” he said.
“I’m excited for the guys to get together again and put their boots back on in the US, because we all live here now. It is going to be a lot of fun.
“Most of the boys in San Diego are rugby league fanatics so once the opportunity came around, I reached out to them and said we should enter a team.
"We have got a few American guys I played with in the USA team at the World 9s, but the majority is Team Air Locker.”
After stints with the Broncos, Titans, Easts Tigers and Burleigh Bears, Jones moved to the United States but his Las Vegas business venture enabled him to maintain contact with the game in Australia.
“We had a nightlife company running on the strip for two years. We had 40 employees,” Jones said.
“Some of the guys I played with growing up have played NRL so every time they came to Vegas I would look after them, show them Vegas and make sure they had a good time.
“The only other Australians in Vegas are entertainers, like Thunder Down Under, so it is good to hear an Aussie voice in a foreign country."
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However, Jones believes that the NRL can make an impact through the March 2 double-header, featuring South Sydney against Manly and Brisbane Broncos taking on Sydney Roosters, as well as the Vegas 9s and an NFL-style talent combine.
“I think Vegas is the perfect spot to have it,” he said. “Without the game being on TV I think it is hard for Americans to transition, but there is so much talent here.
“If you were to headhunt ex-college athletes, there is a definitely a huge pool of players and from a transitional point, from gridiron to rugby league, I feel like they are similar. If they were to learn the game, I feel they would adapt a lot better to rugby league than rugby union.”
