EARLS

As this chapter begins to close, the journey behind it does not. I lived a dream. Then I created another. And somehow, they collided in the most unimaginable way. For me, this was never just about a product. It was lived experience translated into design. A conversation between performance and style. Between the field and the clothes. Between the little boy I was and the man still learning how to turn up for himself. To be part of a first-of-its-kind moment with @earlscollection @asics_sportstyle_au @asicsfootball_au means more than I can explain. Not because it is history for the sake of being first. But because of what it stands for. Progress. Breaking barriers. Opening pathways. Showing the next young kid that the story does not have to end where they think it does. HOME. FAMILY. HEALING. RECONNECTION. Those words became the centre of everything. The big house. Crosbie Park. The people who raised me. The people who believed in me before I knew how to believe in myself. The moments I had to come back to, not to change them, but to finally hold them with peace. I have spent so much of my life getting back up. Getting tackled. Falling. Standing again. Down, up. Down, up. That is where I learned resilience. That is where I learned to keep going. That is where I learned the continual pursuit of better. This project reminded me that you can still dream as an adult. You can live one dream, step away from it, and still have another waiting for you. You can lose parts of yourself, find new ones, and keep moving forward with purpose. There is no age limit on hope. There is no timeline on becoming. There is no rule that says your next chapter cannot be bigger than the one before. To everyone who has shown love and support through this campaign, from HOME to around the world, thank you. Thank you for listening. For feeling it. For allowing me to share this part of my story. For reminding me that healing can move, dream, and belong. And to the next little boy or girl who walks through the door after this: Keep dreaming. Keep getting back up. Keep turning up for yourself. Your story is still being written. Nothing but love, Lewi

Boys rocking the new @earlscollection & @asicsaustralia collab 😮‍💨

Lewi sits down with @matt_burton6 and @crittaaa_ to share something special.   ASICS | Earls GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 sneaker and LETHAL TESTITMOIAL™ 4 IT boot will launch on asics.com/au and selected global retailers on Thursday 21 May, 9AM, AEST.

Some journeys are measured in distance. Others are measured in what they allow you to return to. What began as a collection became something far more personal. A reflection on Home, Family, Healing, and Reconnection. Not as concepts, but as lived experiences. Moments carried quietly for years, now finally met with clarity, understanding, and peace. Across every chapter, the story remained the same. The house in Belfast. The field at Crosbie Park. The people who stood behind Lewi long before the world ever knew his name. The memories that shaped him. The spaces he once had to leave in order to fully understand what they meant. But stories like this are never carried alone. From the very beginning, the people who connected with this journey became part of it. Every person who entered the raffle, wore the collection, shared the message, or simply saw themselves reflected in the story helped give it meaning beyond Lewi himself. Because HOME resonates differently for everyone. To be able to open something this personal to the world, and have it understood, embraced, and carried by so many people, is what made this chapter truly meaningful. What started as one person’s reflection became something shared — across different homes, different upbringings, different memories, and different lives. This collaboration was never only about footwear, but about connection and people seeing pieces of themselves within the story. The young boy with a huge imagination, and the community that helped carry that dream far enough for it to finally find the light. And now, as the raffle draws to a close, so does this chapter. Not as an ending, but as the completion of something meaningful. A full-circle moment that allowed the story to be told honestly, completely, and with peace. Everything led here. To the places that shaped him. To the people who held him. To the dream that found its way home. Two homes. One story. One family. The GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 & The LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT @earlscollection @asics_sportstyle_au @asicsfootball_au Raffle Closing Soon

Home resonates differently Sometimes, home is not found beneath stadium lights. It is found in the changing sheds before anyone else arrives. Cold concrete. Muddy mirrors. Grass across the floor. The old smell of liniment in the air, the kind that hits you the moment you walk in and tells you exactly where you are. A sideways beanie pulled low, holding off a Christchurch winter. Old tackle pads marked by years of contact, indented by generations of shoulders, each one leaving something behind. Some carried the dream beyond the local ground. Others returned to give the next generation somewhere to begin. Those pads hold more than impact. They hold the first lessons of the game. How to run harder. How to catch the ball properly. How to respect the teammates beside you. How to share the ball. How to play for something bigger than yourself. Most importantly, they teach you how to fall. Again and again. Up and down. Up and down. Until getting back up becomes part of who you are. That is where you learn to turn up for yourself. In these images, Shane aka Clubber sits inside the Riccarton Knights sheds with the LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT. Clubber does not just sit in that room. He symbolises it. The way he played. The way he carried himself. The person you looked across the field and wanted beside you. The one who gave you confidence without needing to say much. The one you wanted in the trenches beside you. Players like Clubber are the heartbeat of grassroots rugby league. The soul of the changing sheds. The spirit of the jersey. The reason a club feels like family. This is grassroots rugby league. Service over spotlight. Belonging over recognition. This boot is for them. For the kids. For the volunteers. For the scarred ankles and hometown legends who built the game. Before the big stage, there is always a local ground. A shed. A jersey. A coach. Someone who believed. The HOME boot carries the roots of the game, the people who keep it alive, and every young player learning that where they start can carry them further than they imagined. The LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT @earlscollection x @asicsfootball_au RAFFLE OPEN NOW

Home resonates differently. It lives in your memories, your story, and everything that made you. This moment was built on four pillars: HOME FAMILY HEALING RECONNECTION. Not as words on a page, but as things he had to live, feel, carry, and come back to. The big house in Belfast. The field at Crosbie Park. The people who raised Lewi when the dream was still just a feeling. The people who stood behind him before the world ever saw him. The moments he had to come back to, not to change them, but to finally hold them with peace. This is where the story becomes history. For the first time @earlscollection @asics_sportstyle_au @asicsfootball_au come together in one shared expression, carrying the collaboration beyond lifestyle footwear and onto the football field. What began in the quiet details of HOME now becomes a world-first moment, carrying sport, culture, memory, and purpose into the same story. The house and the field. Memory and movement. The young boy with a huge imagination, and the man who carried that dream long enough for it to find the light. Everything has led here. To the places that shaped him. To the people who held him. To the past he can now meet with peace. To the dream that finally found its way home. Two homes. One story. Intertwined. RAFFLE OPEN ONLINE NOW

Home resonates differently. Sometimes, home is the field etched into you before you understand what you are chasing. Crosbie Park. Home of the Riccarton Knights. The red and black jersey. Number 7 on a young boy’s back. Black boots on his feet. A dream moving through him before he had the words to name it. Before the bright lights. Before representing his country. There was grassroots footy. At the club, the game was never just a game. It was where young people learned to move together, trust the pass, and feel the quiet reward of helping their mates succeed. The quiet hands behind the game. The ones who kept the jersey, the club, and the dream moving forward. This boot is for them. For the kids who found hope on local grounds. For the hometown legends. For the pros. For the retired players. For every person who gave something to the game. LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 I HOME carries the vision of a young boy who imagined something beyond reach, now made real. Lewi carried that dream through the highest levels of the game. His game lived in the details. The work that lifted others and moved the game forward. In this story, the worlds cross over. The young boy in black boots. The player he became. The eras meeting in one frame. A white boot once only imagined, now standing in the world. But as he says, it does not belong to him alone. It belongs to the people who believed before the world could see it. To the two homes that let a little boy dream beyond what was in front of him. And to ASICS, for giving that imagination a place to become real. To the athlete whose final whistle has blown, the dream does not end there. What carried you through the game can still carry you forward: the passion, discipline, belief, and knowing you still have more to give. And to the little boy in black boots, this is for you. A white boot for what you could only imagine then, and for the man who carried that dream long enough for it to find the light. LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT @earlscollection x @asicsfootball_au - HOME 🏠 Raffle Opens Online Tuesday 12th May 10AM AEST | 12PM NZT

Home resonates differently. Sometimes, reconnection does not arrive loudly. Sometimes, it arrives softly. A grandson. His nana. A love shaped by the man they both still carry. For Lewi and Nana Aileen, Pop Wiremu was home in human form. Humble, gentle, grounded. The kind of man whose presence stayed with you because of how he carried himself. To Lewi, he was more than a grandfather. He was his hero. The man he followed as a little boy. The man whose values shaped him. The man whose memory still walks through every part of this story. After Pop Wiremu passed in 2022, something tender shifted. Lewi and Aileen were never disconnected, but grief has a way of placing silence between people who share the same ache. Sometimes love can feel too full to hold. The GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 HOME gave them something beautiful to return through. Not a reason to forget, but a reason to reconnect. A reason to smile in the same room again, with Wiremu still present in every detail. Seeing Aileen in this campaign meant everything to Lewi. At 90 years old, smiling on set, telling everyone how special the day felt, she gave him something he did not know he needed. Peace. Not the kind that removes what is missing. The kind that reminds you love is still here. This is what HOME can do. It can bring people back together. It can soften what once hurt to touch. It can turn memory into movement, and grief into something that walks beside you with love. For Lewi, every step in the GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 HOME carries Pop Wiremu. For Aileen, every step carries him too. Not looking down. Walking with them. HOME. FAMILY. HEALING. RECONNECTION. For Nana Aileen. For Trish. For every mother, nana, and woman who holds a family together. For the mums we still get to hold and the mums we now hold in memory. For the love that does not leave. The lessons that stay. The hands that raised us, carried us, and shaped the way we move through the world. Happy Mother’s Day. The GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 @earlscollection x @asics_sportstyle_au Raffle Entry Opening Online. Tuesday May 12th 10AM AEST | 12PM NZT

Home resonates differently. Some stories do not need to be explained. They just need to be felt. Through the lens of the big house in Belfast, the GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 returns to where so much of Lewi’s story began. His mum, Trish, sits in the kitchen in the work overalls she wore for decades, with the photo album open in front of her. Those overalls carry more than work. They carry early starts, long days, sacrifice, resilience, and the quiet strength of a woman who kept turning up for herself and her family. Trish never had to tell Lewi what hard work was. He saw it. In her actions. In her routine. In the love that looked like showing up. Looking through the album, she sees the young boy she raised. The boy who watched her, learned from her, and carried that same quiet determination into everything he became. A little boy she watched grow, leave, chase a dream, live it, lose parts of himself, find new ones, and come all the way back home. His Nana knits, wearing a piece with the big house stitched into it. A pāua shell sits beside her in tribute to Pop Wiremu. A reminder that some people never really leave the room. They stay in the details. In the feeling. In the home. Lewi sits in the same place where the only photo of him and his dad, Bevan, was taken. Not to reopen the past, But to meet it with peace. Then the front lawn. A footy ball in his hands, walking through the same grass where he once pretended to be his heroes. That little boy had no idea he would live one dream, retire, start again, and one day return to that same lawn carrying a responsibility this meaningful. The overalls. The photo album. The knitting. The shell. The lawn. The carpet. The memory. These details are not just memories. They are the language of this story. HOME in the house that raised him. FAMILY in the hands that held it together. HEALING in the places he can now return to with peace. RECONNECTION in bringing every piece of the journey back to where it began. Not to explain it. But to feel it. The GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 @earlscollection x @asics_sportstyle_au - HOME Raffle Open Online Tuesday 12th May 10AM AEST | 12PM NZT

Home resonates differently. Sometimes, a dream does not arrive alone.
It arrives carrying everything that made it possible. For Lewi, the white boot began as a quiet kind of wonder. Something different.
Something special.
Something he had only ever seen from a distance. It was never about standing above anyone.
It was about daring to imagine something different,
something unique,
while staying close to the values that raised him. To dream beyond what was in front of him,
without ever losing sight of where he came from. Because the white boot was never about being louder.
It was about becoming, quietly. Carrying his roots with him.
Holding onto humility.
And remembering that anything that shines
is only there because something underneath it held firm. Before the white boot, there were black boots. The handed-down ones. The borrowed ones.
The muddy ones left on the verandah after training. The boots that knew the cold before the dream knew the light. They carried the early mornings.
The heavy, frosty fields.
The unseen work.
The hope of a young boy who wanted something more, even if he did not yet know how to reach it. Here, the LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT - HOME rests on top of them. Not because it replaces them.
Because it belongs to them. It is the white boot paying respect to the black boots beneath it.
To everything they endured.
To everything they taught.
To every person and place that helped the dream survive long enough to become real. Home taught Lewi that. Crosbie Park taught him that. His mum, his grandparents, the Riccarton Knights, the coaches, managers, and volunteers all taught him that forward movement is never carried by one person alone. The white boot is different.
But it is not separate. It is woven into the same story.
Raised by the same foundation.
Held up by the same love. A dream made visible.
A journey honoured.
A humble reminder that what shines now was carried first by everything that came before. The LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT - HOME @earlscollection x @asicsfootball_au Raffle Coming Soon.

Home resonates differently. Sometimes, home is not a single place. It is the thread that holds every place together. Belfast. Crosbie Park. The house gave Lewi family, memory, and foundation. The club gave him team, discipline, and a place to grow. In these images, that thread is held by the people who shaped the journey. A lace from the GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 and a lace from the LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT, intertwined in the hands of Lewi’s mum, Trish. A quiet gesture, but one that carries the whole meaning. A mother weaving together the house and the field. SportStyle and football. Memory and movement. Not as separate chapters, but as part of the same family. This is where the story becomes history. For the first time, ASICS SportStyle Australia and ASICS Football Australia move as one, carrying the collaboration beyond lifestyle footwear and onto the football field with the LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT. What began as a story of home now becomes a world-first expression of family, sport, culture, and purpose. Then Tony, holding the LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT inside the Riccarton Knights clubhouse at Crosbie Park. He represents the coaches, managers, volunteers, and all those who gave their time to help a young boy move forward. The ones who unlocked the changing rooms. Ran drills. Offered guidance. And made a local club feel like a second home. And Trish, in the work overalls that tell their own story. A life of sacrifice, resilience, and love shown through action. The kind of love that does not always speak loudly, but holds everything together. Together, these images honour the people and places behind the journey. The home that raised him. The club that shaped him. The family that carried him. The community that helped him believe. One lace from the house. One lace from the field. Woven by family. Carried by community. Made to move forward. The GEL-CUMULUS™ 16 and LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT @earlscollection x @asics_sportstyle_au @asicsfootball_au HOME. Raffle Details Coming.

Home resonates differently.
Sometimes, it looks like the thing you could once only imagine……. For the first time, the LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT - HOME A boot designed through the eyes of a young boy who grew up believing in something bigger than what was in front of him. Back then, dreams did not always look possible. They lived in the imagination. In the quiet moments.
 This boot is for that belief. For the kids chasing something they cannot yet explain.
For the adults still carrying the dream they started with.
For anyone who has ever been told to think smaller, be quieter, or stay inside the lines. Don’t. Some things are felt in the heart before they can exist in your hands. What feels far away today becomes the thing that carries you tomorrow. Keep dreaming.
Keep believing.
Keep going. Because the world does not move forward by listening to doubt. It moves forward through the people willing to imagine more for themselves. The LETHAL TESTIMONIAL™ 4 IT @earlscollection x @asicsfootball_au HOME Coming Soon.