Tongan forward Felise Kaufusi has revealed his funky hairdo has cost him more than $1000 to maintain, and how it all started as a dare from a rookie Dolphins’ teammate.
Kaufusi will be easy to spot when the Tongans start crowd favourites against the Kangaroos at a packed CommBank Stadium on Sunday afternoon.
The NRL has featured plenty of eyebrow-raising hairstyles in recent years, including New Zealand Warriors’ winger Dallin Watene-Zelezniak’s perm, Viliame Kikau’s bleached mohawk, and Canberra’s Josh Papalii’s mullet.
Kaufusi has now explained why he has opted for the random strip of hair across the back of his head, or the ‘Kaufusi fade’, and what he has planned next.
The backrower started regularly shaving his head after realising he was going bald, but was then inspired by a TikTok video shown to him by Redcliffe winger Jack Bostock in April.
“It started as a joke – and it still is a joke – when Jack showed me this TikTok video of this bald fella who had started growing out his hair at the back,” Kaufusi said.
“He dared me to do it, and because I don’t take myself seriously, I did it, copped a lot of crap, then kept it, only to still cop a lot of crap.
“The hair was already gone, but it continued to grow around the back. In the video they had called it an ‘eclipse fade’. I’m calling it the Kaufusi fade.
