Selfish, erratic but brilliant: Unwrapping NRL enigma Tevita Pangai Jr
Tevita Pangai Jr will go down as one of the most talented, controversial and confounding figures in the Broncos’ 34-year history. This is why the club released him.
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Tevita Pangai Jr was released by the Broncos because he was viewed internally as erratic, lacking in leadership and a poor role model for Brisbane’s emerging stars in the club’s quest to hit back as a premiership force.
News Corp can today reveal the real reasons for Pangai Jr’s departure at Red Hill as the Bulldogs recruit prepares to exact revenge in Sunday’s grudge match against the Broncos at Sydney’s Accor Stadium.
Pangai Jr will go down as one of the most talented, controversial and confounding figures in the Broncos’ 34-year history.
On his day, the Tongan Test star was Brisbane’s version of North Queensland’s Dally M champion Jason Taumalolo, a 113kg ball of explosive energy who could single-handedly win games with his power, raw talent and tackle-busting strength.
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But amid the flashes of brilliance, Pangai Jr was – and is – as volatile as a Molotov cocktail.
His rap sheet at Brisbane included a raft of on-field suspensions for high shots and brain snaps, compounded by off-field scandals headlined by a series of deliberate Covid breaches, including visiting a barber shop owned by bikies, which painted Pangai Jr as a maverick out of control at Red Hill.
Therein lies the challenge for the Bulldogs. They must somehow unlock the enigmatic riddle that is Pangai Jr … because there is a view the 26-year-old doesn’t even know how to extract the best of himself.
For all his inconsistency, Pangai Jr has the tools to produce at least one devastating performance in a season and Broncos coach Kevin Walters is wary of the rampaging back-rower teaching Brisbane a lesson on Sunday.
“Tevita will be fired up,” Walters said. “When any player comes up against their former club, they always find something a little bit special.
“We’re not expecting anything different from Tevita. He is a quality player and we are certainly aware of his capabilities.
“On his day, I know he can do some damage.”
In the corridors of power at Red Hill, Walters was among the key decision-makers who deemed Pangai Jr surplus to requirements at the Broncos.
A convenient, bit-part explanation for his exit is that Brisbane were sinking deep in dangerous salary-cap waters. Midway through 2019, Pangai Jr had signed a three-year extension worth in excess of $2 million. Last season, he was on $675,000, which was due to rise to $725,000 in 2022.
Collectively, Pangai Jr and former Broncos teammate Matt Lodge were set to swallow $1.5m of Brisbane’s salary cap this year.
Brisbane chiefs needed to recalibrate their cap spend by directing more funds to their playmaking spine, triggering the release of Pangai Jr and Lodge, which freed-up $800,000-a-season to lure halfback Adam Reynolds from Souths.
Walters insists he has no personal problem with Pangai Jr, saying salary-cap pressures were his overriding concern.
“Cap issues were certainly a factor,” Walters said.
“We had to find money to make a play for Adam Reynolds and we had a lot of money tied up in our forwards, so someone had to go.
“Tevita played some good footy here. He is a good person at heart, but sometimes things don’t work out how you like them to and I just felt he needed a change.
“Tevita has found some new ground at the Bulldogs and I hope he does well there.”
While Walters is not a man to hold personal grudges, others at Brisbane felt Pangai Jr’s future at Red Hill was untenable.
The TPJ narrative runs deeper than salary-cap dramas. His demise was multifaceted. Behind the scenes, Pangai Jr was seen as a polarising character in the Broncos’ dressing room. In a game where bonds are built on trust, club insiders could find the NSW Origin hopeful opaque, mysterious, difficult to read.
However, some Broncos cohorts, such as Lodge, were fiercely loyal to TPJ.
Defenders of Pangai Jr lauded his courage for speaking up during Brisbane’s two years of shambolic performance under former coach Anthony Seibold.
While other teammates zipped their lips, Pangai Jr told Broncos coaches their training methods were sloppy and lacking in attention to detail. He believed the football program required more professionalism to challenge big guns such as the Roosters and Storm.
The problem was Pangai Jr failed to himself exhibit the golden standards he demanded of the entire club.
The flashpoint came midway through 2020, when Pangai Jr committed four separate Covid violations, ostensibly thumbing his nose at the NRL and the Broncos. He wined and dined with former Wallabies star Quade Cooper at Greek and Thai restaurants. After revelations of his bikie-barber shop breach, a Broncos faction wanted to sack him, only to relent at the 11th-hour after board member Darren Lockyer urged the club to give Pangai Jr a second chance.
Broncos chairman Karl Morris reached out to a business associate, former Test star Greg Veivers, the brother-in-law of Wayne Bennett, to help mentor Pangai Jr.
After working with the firebrand, Veivers’ report to the Broncos board was glowing. With his Broncos pay suspended for three months, Pangai Jr was sent to a garden nursery, working 40 hours a week for $20 an hour. He was so popular with nursery staff he was invited to their Christmas party.
Before his daily stint shovelling dirt and carrying plants, Pangai Jr trained with former Broncos skipper Corey Parker, who helped him shed 8kg.
“Corey Parker lived three kilometres away from Tevita,” Veivers explains of the mentoring process to save Pangai Jr’s NRL career.
“I asked Corey if he would do me a favour and in turn Tevita.
“Corey said, ‘I train every day, I start at 5am in the morning, if he is here he trains, if he is not he ain’t training’.
“After the first day, Corey rang me and said, ‘Tevita was here, sitting on the doorstep of my (home) gym waiting for me.”
Pangai Jr had risen at 4.30am and run 3km to meet with Parker, who to this day stays in contact with his former Broncos teammate.
“He wasn’t playing so I was just messing with his head and making Tevita understand that to be the best, you have to train like the best,” Parker recalls.
“We would go through the forest for five or 10km runs. Then he would go off to do his work at the nursery. He really enjoyed that side of it and I think it gave Tevita a bit of perspective to what he was doing.
“He went through some dark, dark days. He was literally at the crossroads in his career and I needed to get him to realise he could be anything he wanted to be in the game, provided he did it in the right way.”
Ultimately, the administrative winds of change that blew through the Broncos last year would sweep Pangai Jr out into the cold.
Six weeks after the arrival of Broncos CEO Dave Donaghy, Pangai Jr was given permission to negotiate with rivals for an immediate transfer.
Donaghy and Walters admired Pangai Jr’s quest for reformation, but like a rocky marriage that had endured too many tumultuous moments, there was a sense the forward was carrying too much emotional baggage.
Brisbane bosses had tired of Tevita’s slew of suspensions. They were concerned about his preparation for games, and the potential to model poor habits for Brisbane’s emerging crop, such as TC Robati, Payne Haas, Pat Carrigan and Jordan Riki, at a critical stage of their development.
As Pangai Jr and Lodge hit the exits, Reynolds, Penrith premiership-winner Kurt Capewell and former Titans captain Ryan James swung through the Red Hill turnstiles.
Entering his seventh season of NRL, Pangai Jr has amassed 102 first-grade games. He has played 20 or more games in a season just once. Such inconsistency could not be a cornerstone of the Broncos’ rebuild as they fight to break a 16-year title drought.
“I was disappointed it didn’t work out with Tevita because he has immense talent,” Broncos chairman Morris said.
“But with talent you have to have the discipline to go with it.
“I was a bit worried about him at the time so we tried to get him as much help as we could, because that’s what the Broncos do.
“At the end of the day, sometimes things can go a bit too far and change is the best thing. We wish him the best at the Bulldogs.”
Last year, in the wake of his Covid breaches, Pangai Jr told News Corp “the penny had finally dropped”. A brief six-game stint at premiers Penrith (he agonisingly missed the grand final win due to injury) opened his eyes to a winning culture.
Now, as the last-placed Dogs chase a fresh winning epoch of their own, it’s time for Pangai Jr to walk the walk.
“Has Tevita helped his cause? He probably hasn’t,” Parker said.
“I liked the fact he could go and play with Penrith because it opened his eyes to what was needed, not what he thought was needed.
“We have discussed things in simple layman’s terms – where else can you get a job that is going to pay him NRL money?
“Tevita could be the best back-rower in the game if he wanted to … but it’s now up to him.”
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Originally published as Selfish, erratic but brilliant: Unwrapping NRL enigma Tevita Pangai Jr
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