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All Blacks and Highlanders player Malakai Fekitoa has publicly expressed his issues with anger.
The Tongan-born centre posted a message to his 173,000 Instagram followers on Wednesday, admitting his own problems and encouraging others in a similar position to seek help.
Fekitoa could not be immediately reached over why he had gone public on the issue, a course that blindsided his Auckland-based manager Bruce Sharrock.
Sharrock said he “did not control his social media”, and had not spoken to his player about the posting. He had no comment at this time “and there will be none either”.
When he did speak to Fekitoa “my first advice to Malakai is things that are personal, you keep them personal,” Sharrock said. Nor would the Highlanders comment, until they had spoken to Fekitoa, who trained with the team on Wednesday.
“I’ve got a huge problem with anger,” Fekitoa said. “I don’t handle some situation very well on and off the field. I get really angry sometimes and flip out so I would like to Apologies publicly to any of you if I ever said something really hurtful to you at home, on the field and through social media.
“I’m ashamed and regretful, Lesson learnt. I suggest that no matter how old you are or who you are. Whatever it is. You need to speak to someone about it. Your feelings and what’s inside you. Its never bad until it will cost you. #CallOutForHelp.”
Fekitoa has been named to start at centre for the Highlanders in Thursday’s Super Rugby trial with the Crusaders in Waimumu, near Gore.
His tweets have been largely upbeat and positive, celebrating his successes and those of his team-mates, recalling his humble beginnings.
Despite his admission, for which he gave no apparent reason for sharing, the 23-year-old has come a long way on and off the field since arriving in New Zealand aged 17 in 2009.
Brought up in a family of 15 children on Tonga’s sparsely populated Ha’apai Islands, Fekitoa regularly shared a house with more than 20 family members, but was just 14 when his father Eni died after a car crash.
All Blacks and Highlanders star Malakai Fekitoa has come clean over his anger management issues.
He could not speak any English when he came to Auckland on a rugby scholarship with Wesley College, after shining for the Tongan sevens team as a teenager.