“Tomorrow there is no point,” she said. “Were I to form a view that the detention application is made good, there’s simply no one to take Mr Fainu into custody, extraordinary as it might seem.”
She increased Fainu’s bail conditions, so he must report to police on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and is not to leave his address unless in the company of his mother and father, who were among those in court to hear the verdict.
Manase Fainu (right), supported by fellow Manly player Josh Aloiai (centre), outside court last month.Credit:Wolter-Peeters
As Fainu left court, met by over 30 family and friends and flanked by security and Manly teammate Josh Aloiai, his lawyer Paul McGirr said, “there’s nothing that he wants to say at this stage”.
Supporters of Fainu during his trial in Parramatta District Court included his agent Mario Tartak, Manly coach Des Hasler and Aloiai, who appeared on the same day as the Sea Eagles’ game against the Roosters and was one of seven players to sit out after objecting to wearing a pride jersey.
The jury was told Fainu had not played NRL since 2019 under the code’s no-fault stand-down policy.
NRL player Manase Fainu, pictured with a white towel on his head, jumping a fence onto church grounds.
During his day in the stand, Fainu claimed he had been at least 10 meters away from the brawl between his friends and Levi’s group.
He said two friends, including Uona “Big Buck” Faingaa, had earlier been kicked out of a charity dance in the church hall where Faingaa said he intended to pick up money for a concreting job.
Fainu said, after that incident, he jumped over a fence back onto church grounds expecting to collect the money himself, but his friends followed him over, and then he saw “like a brawl going on”.
“I backpedaled,” he said, adding that his NRL training was to walk away and not get involved.
Fainu said he ran after hearing “knife, knife” and claimed he did not know who stabbed the victim.
It is an agreed fact that Fainu had an operation on his left shoulder in September 2019 and was wearing a sling on the night of the stabbing. He was captured on CCTV jumping back over the fence and picking his sling up off the ground.
Faamanu Levi, who was stabbed in the back at a Mormon church dance.Credit:Rhett Wyman
Levi gave evidence he and his best friend had walked two men to the front gate after a fight on the dance floor and told them to go home.
“I said … this is a church activity,” Levi said, adding that one shook his head and replied, “F— you.”
“I don’t know who was calling out, [saying]’Come out and see what you want,’ but I said, ‘Goodbye, we’re going back inside.’”
He said he had “never experienced this kind of thing”, and a fight later erupted next to his car.
Levi felt a stab to his lower right shoulder and said he “was in pain that I can’t explain”, but did not see who had knifed him.
His housemate, Tony Quach, said he saw Fainu holding a steak knife with a clenched fist, his right arm bent at a 90-degree angle and his left arm in a sling, looking “angry” as he stabbed Levi’s back.
Quach said he “recognized Manase” after the incident.
An Instagram screenshot of Manase Fainu in hospital after shoulder surgery in September 2019, tendered as evidence at his trial.
Levi’s friend Kupi Toilalo was “adamant the person with the knife was the person with the sling”, Crown prosecutor Emma Curran had submitted.
Cunneen had said Fainu’s sling “drew the eye” and was a “distinguishing feature” of the group of five men, but argued there was no one else’s DNA on it.
She told the jury her client had “really suffered by his position as a football player”.
“It was easy to blame it on him because some people knew him and the sling stood out.”
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