Before he discovered football, which he calls "the greatest blessing in my life," Giovanni Manu played rugby on the tiny island of Tonga in the middle of the South Pacific, "a third-world country" where the closest continent is Australia. From Tonga, it's a 45-minute flight to American Samoa, birthplace of Penei Sewell. It's a nearly 20-hour flight to Vancouver, where Manu's mother sent him at the age of 11 to live with his aunt.
Don't be fooled by Tonga's warm ocean air, says Manu: the "constant sunshine on the beach" doesn't pay bills. His dad runs a vehicle repair workshop to put food on the table, and "that's what he’s been doing since he was a youngin'." Manu's aunt, who has lived in Vancouver for decades, once told her youngest sister, "If you ever have kids and you want to send them somewhere for better living opportunities and education, you can always send them up here to me."
"So my mom basically raised myself and my two siblings on the island until we reached a reasonable age for high school," Manu said.
They wound up in a small town called Pitt Meadows, about an hour outside of Vancouver. They went to a small school, where Manu was introduced to football and basketball. He liked the parallels between football and rugby, because "I love physicality."
"I love hitting people. I love creating big hits and just hitting people in general. That’s why I played rugby. And transitioning from that to football, sometimes it’s hard to motivate someone to hit someone in football, but that just flowed naturally to me."
Manu admits that he struggled with "things like getting in a stance, learning the rules, such as you can’t hold, or you can’t move until the ball’s snapped."
"But in terms of physicality, someone having to motivate me to hit someone, that was never an issue. My coaches actually told me in high school that I’m hitting people too hard, so yeah.”
A man-child on the offensive line, Manu landed a scholarship to play at the University of British Columbia. The program had never produced an NFL Draft pick. Manu played mostly left tackle, where he pancaked defensive ends. He was in his second year at British Columbia when another Polynesian giant who played left tackle at Oregon was drafted seventh overall by the Lions in 2021.
"I look up to Penei a lot," said Manu.
Three years later, Manu remembers watching a video blog of Sewell's draft-day experience. He remembers, specifically, that Sewell ended the vlog by naming the islands of Polynesia, including Tonga, and saying that "if you kids out there want to make it to the NFL, you can truly make it if you put your mind to it.’"
"It really motivated me," said Manu. "I told myself, ‘If one of my fellow Polynesian brothers can make it, and he’s giving me words of motivation, there’s no reason why I can’t do it either.’ He’s a true inspiration, not only to Samoa, but to the whole Polynesian community."
And now he's Manu's teammate: Manu was drafted in the fourth round by the Lions. Not only that, Brad Holmes traded up to get him. At 6'7, 350 pounds, Manu makes the 6'5, 335-pound Sewell look small. He's a project at offensive tackle, similar to massive Brodric Martin at defensive tackle, said Holmes, "more of a more of a down-the-road future deal."
"But the upside is enormous," said Holmes.
And who better for Manu to learn from than Sewell, the first-team All-Pro who just became the highest-paid offensive tackle in the NFL.
“I do study a lot of his film," Manu said. "I think he’s the best tackle in the league right now. He moves so fluid for how big he is ... It’s great that I’ll be playing with a guy like that, and I just hope to soak up as much information and technique from him.”
It took a village for the Lions to discover Manu. First a scout by the name of Ademi Smith raved about him, then senior personnel executive John Dorsey got wind that Manu was killing it in pre-draft workouts, then Dorsey took it to assistant GM Ray Agnew, who took it to Holmes and said, "Man, I think you gotta take a look at Giovanni here." Once he did, Holmes couldn't look away.
"When we reached out to his agent and tried to get him in for a visit because he wasn’t at the Combine, we could hardly get on the dance card," Holmes said. "The whole dance card was filled up. So he came in on a Sunday, like a Sunday afternoon, and that was like visit number nine."
Teams rarely host prospects on a Sunday, a rare respite in the lead-up to the draft. That's when Manu said he knew the Lions were "all-in" on his potential. He sat with Holmes and Dan Campbell after his workout, when Holmes said it became clear to the Lions that "he’s wired the right way." When they asked him which position he prefers to play up front -- he also played guard for a season in college -- Manu said, "I’ll play anywhere. I’ll play at a position that puts me on the field the quickest. I’ll play a position that contributes to the team winning."
"I loved my visit," said Manu. "I remember leaving, I told myself, ‘I felt at home here. And I would not mind at all if these guys took a chance on me.’"
That they did, trading a future third-round pick to go get him. Holmes said it would have been too much of a "gut-punch" to watch Manu land somewhere else. He landed 12 years ago in Vancouver, some 5,800 miles from home and nearly 2,000 miles from Detroit, which is just a couple miles from Canada. For Manu, it's been a "long journey" that's just getting started.
"I’m not here on my own," he said. "I’m here because of my family and all the mentors I’ve met on the way through this amazing sport of football that I discovered here in Canada."
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