Premiership-winning centre Ricky Leutele has signed a contract with Melbourne Storm for the remainder of the 2020 NRL season.
A veteran of 129 NRL games with the Cronulla Sharks, the Samoan international will return to Australia from the UK where he has been playing in the Super League with the Toronto Wolfpack who have withdrawn from the remainder of the 2020 competition.
Along with his wife and three children, Leutele will have to serve a two-week mandatory quarantine period before joining his new teammates in the Storm camp at Twin Waters in Queensland.
A former Logan Brothers junior, Leutele made his NRL debut for Cronulla in 2010 and was named in the NSW Cup Team of the Year in 2011.
He represented Samoa for the first time in 2014 and went on to play another five internationals.
However the highlight of his career came in 2016 when he played in the Cronulla team that defeated Melbourne in the grand final at ANZ Stadium, earning the Sharks their first premiership.
The 30-year-old’s final NRL game before joining Toronto was the 2018 preliminary final loss to Storm at AAMI Park.
With the Wolfpack, he has played 27 matches, scoring 18 tries, helping them to promotion to Super League for the first time last season.
Leutele will take up the No.30 slot on Storm’s 2020 roster, providing extra depth in the outside backs after loan signing Paul Momirovski was ruled out for 12 weeks following surgery on a finger tendon injury.
