Tulsen Paul Tollett (born 6 May 1973) is a TV presenter and former professional

rugby league Rugby league football, commonly known as just rugby league and sometimes football, footy, rugby or league, is a full-contact sport played by two teams of thirteen players on a rectangular field measuring 68 metres (75 yards) wide and 112 ...

footballer who played in the 1990s and 2000s. A

Great Britain Great Britain is an island in the North Atlantic Ocean off the northwest coast of continental Europe. With an area of , it is the largest of the British Isles, the largest European island and the ninth-largest island in the world. It is ...

international representative utility back, he played in Australia for Sydney's

Penrith Panthers The Penrith Panthers are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the western Sydney suburb of Penrith that competes in the NRL. The team is based west of the centre of Sydney, at the foot of the Blue Mountains. Penrith ...

( Heritage № 320) and the

Parramatta Eels The Parramatta Eels are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the Sydney suburb of Parramatta that competes in the National Rugby League. The Parramatta District Rugby League Football Club was formed in 1947, and their ...

( Heritage № 513) clubs, before moving to England and playing for the

London Broncos The London Broncos are a professional rugby league club in London, England. The club competes in the RFL Championship. It was a member of Super League from its inaugural season in 1996 until the end of the 2014 season, when they were relegat ...

( Heritage № 301).

Background

Tollett was born in

Hastings Hastings () is a large seaside town and borough in East Sussex on the south coast of England, east to the county town of Lewes and south east of London. The town gives its name to the Battle of Hastings, which took place to the north-west ...

, Sussex in the United Kingdom, but moved with his family to Australia as a youngster. His junior career was with Emu Plains JRLC prior to being signed by Penrith.

Rugby league career

Tollett played at the Penrith Panthers and the Parramatta Eels before joining the Broncos for the 1996 inaugural season of

Super League I The year 1996's Stones Bitter Super League I was the official name for the 102nd season of top-level rugby league football, and the first year of Europe's new championship: Super League. It is also the first season of rugby league to be played i ...

.Broncos' Tollett calls it a day
Wales Online, 30 November 2001 He played his junior football for

Emu Plains Emu Plains is a suburb of Sydney in the state of New South Wales, Australia. It is 58 kilometres west of the Sydney central business district, in the local government area of the City of Penrith and is part of the Greater Western Sydney re ...

. After a successful first season in England, he was selected for the

squad to tour Papua New Guinea, Fiji and New Zealand. Tollett's highlights with the Broncos include: *Playing in the side that beat top Australian side

Canberra Raiders The Canberra Raiders are an Australian professional rugby league football club based in the national capital city of Canberra, Australian Capital Territory. They have competed in Australasia's elite rugby league competition, the National Rugby ...

in Super League's World Club Championship series in 1997 (London Broncos chalked up a rare win by a Super League side against their Australasian Super League counterparts in that year's competition) *Being part of the first London Broncos side to reach a Rugby League

Challenge Cup The Challenge Cup is a knockout rugby league cup competition organised by the Rugby Football League, held annually since 1896, with the exception of 1915–1919 and 1939–1940, due to World War I and World War II respectively. It involves am ...

final, in 1999 against the

Leeds Rhinos The Leeds Rhinos are a professional rugby league club in Leeds, West Yorkshire, England. The club was formed in 1870 as Leeds St John's and play in the Super League, the top tier of English rugby league. They have played home matches at Headi ...

Wembley Wembley () is a large suburbIn British English, "suburb" often refers to the secondary urban centres of a city. Wembley is not a suburb in the American sense, i.e. a single-family residential area outside of the city itself. in north-west Londo ...

Injury takes toll on Tollett
BBC Sport, 29 November 2001 *Being in the highest finishing London side (second, Super League 1997) in the club's ( Fulham, London Crusaders, Broncos) history to date

Rugby union career

Tollett also had spells in

rugby union Rugby union, commonly known simply as rugby, is a close-contact team sport that originated at Rugby School in the first half of the 19th century. One of the two codes of rugby football, it is based on running with the ball in hand. In its m ...

with English Premiership side Harlequins during 1997/98, as well as

London Welsh London Welsh Rugby Football Club ( cy, Clwb Rygbi Cymry Llundain) was a rugby union club formed in 1885. Based in Old Deer Park, Richmond-upon-Thames, London Welsh RFC played in the English Premiership in the 2012–13 and 2014–15 seasons, ...

in 1999/2000 during the Rugby League close season.

Media work

Tollett was forced to give up playing in 2001 due to a persistent shoulder injury.Tollett quits Broncos
BBC Sport, 29 November 2001 He then moved into the media and now presents sport on

BBC World News BBC World News is an international English-language pay television network, operated under the ''BBC Global News Limited'' division of the BBC, which is a public corporation of the UK government's Department for Digital, Culture, Media and S ...

. Previous to this he worked for ABC News 24 - now ABC News channel and ABC NewsRadio - now ABC News on radio in Sydney and has also worked for

BBC Radio 5 Live BBC Radio 5 Live is a British national radio station owned and operated by the BBC that broadcasts mainly news, sport, discussion, interviews and phone-ins. It is the principal BBC radio station covering sport in the United Kingdom, broadcast ...

Sky Sports Sky Sports is a group of British subscription sports channels operated by the satellite pay television company Sky Group (a division of Comcast), and is the dominant subscription television sports brand in the United Kingdom and Ireland. It ...

Eurosport Eurosport is a group of pay television networks in Europe and parts of Asia. Owned by Warner Bros. Discovery through Warner Bros. Discovery Sports#Warner Bros. Discovery Sports Europe properties, its international sports unit, it operates two ...

and

Setanta Sports Setanta Sports is a sports television company based in Dublin, Ireland broadcasting throughout select Eurasian. The company was formed in 1990 to facilitate the broadcasting of Irish sporting events to international audiences. The company previo ...

amongst others as a presenter, reporter or commentator, and worked as a pitchside reporter for TVH, the host broadcaster at the

2007 Rugby World Cup The 2007 Rugby World Cup was the sixth Rugby World Cup, a quadrennial international rugby union competition inaugurated in 1987. Twenty nations competed for the Webb Ellis Cup in the tournament, which was hosted by France from 7 September to 2 ...

in France. In 2021, Tollett was a commentator for

Channel 4 Channel 4 is a British free-to-air public broadcast television network operated by the state-owned enterprise, state-owned Channel Four Television Corporation. It began its transmission on 2 November 1982 and was established to provide a four ...

's coverage of the

2020 Paralympics The , branded as the Tokyo 2020 Paralympic Games, was an international multi-sport parasports event held from 24 August to 5 September 2021 in Tokyo, Japan. They were the 16th Summer Paralympic Games as organized by the International Paralympic ...

Qualifications

Tollett holds a Bachelor of Physical Education teaching degree, as well as a first dan karate black belt.

References

External links

London Broncos profile
*(archived by web.archive.org
Statistics: Tulsen Tollett
Rugby Premiership {{DEFAULTSORT:Tollett, Tulsen 1973 births Living people BBC sports presenters and reporters English male karateka English rugby league players English rugby union players English television presenters Harlequin F.C. players London Broncos players London Welsh RFC players Parramatta Eels players Penrith Panthers players Rugby league centres Rugby league five-eighths Rugby league fullbacks Rugby league halfbacks Rugby league players from East Sussex Rugby league wingers Rugby union players from East Sussex Sportspeople from Hastings