Ezra Mam's raw admission on Spencer Leniu saga and car crash that causes mass outrage
Last October, Mam made headlines for all the wrong reasons after his ute crashed into an Uber at Bardon, just outside of Brisbane injuring a woman and child.
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Mam passed the breathalyser test, but a roadside drug swap returned a positive reading to cocaine.
Mam pleaded guilty to one count of driving while relevant drug is present in the blood and driving without a licence.
But while the Magistrate was relatively lenient, the NRL was less so.
The 22-year-old was slapped with a combined $120,000 in fines from the NRL and the Broncos and was handed a nine-game ban.
Speaking about the ordeal, Mam says the whole experience has given him a different outlook on life, acknowledging in hindsight that he was previously very selfish.
'In hindsight, I didn't think about how my actions can impact others,' he said in an interview with The Sydney Morning Herald.
'Obviously I'm trying my best to learn from that now, I'm here to make better decisions for myself. There's no excuse for my actions, I've got to own that now.
'I'm still learning to deal with everything. I feel very remorseful for everything that happened.
'For me, I was dealing with stuff in the wrong way. I need to learn from that. That's how I grow as a person. Experiences like this, you can take a lot away from it and I feel like I've taken a lot away from this situation to improve myself in many different ways.'
Mam returned to the NRL for the Broncos against the Dragons in round 11 and was back to his scintillating best.
Such was the strength of his performances that he was called into Billy Slater's Queensland squad for Origin Game 2.
Mam was named 18th man for Game 2. And it incredibly allowed him to put another saga behind him, the feud with Blues enforcer Spencer Leniu.
Vision from after Game 2 on Wednesday showed Leniu approach Queensland's 18th man after full-time, with the pair engaging in a brief conversation that ended in an embrace.
You can watch the moment in the player at the top of the page.
The touching moment showed they have seemingly finally buried the hatched some 16 months after Leniu labelled Mam a 'monkey' in the Las Vegas season opener between the Roosters and Broncos in 2024.
Leniu copped an eight-match ban for the slur which he insisted was unintentional and was nothing more than 'one brown man saying something to another brown man'.
But in a great show of character, after full-time, Leniu sought out Mam to bury the hatchet and clear the air with the Broncos star.
And Mam revealed he has accepted Leniu's apology and says it is all in the past now.
'We were able to have a chat and put everything behind us. I won't go into much detail about what was said, but I'm happy he came up to me and we're able to move forward now and get on with the year,' Mam told SMH.
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