Why Junior Tatola is quietly making a big noise at South Sydney
IN among the big names fighting out league’s greatest rivalry when the Rabbitohs host the Roosters, NICK WALSHAW discovers a quiet achiever who’s made big strides with young legs
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JUNIOR Tatola was cleaning his room before Christmas when he came across an old team photo.
Specifically, the 2016 Junior Kangaroos. Which should’ve made him smile, right?
Yet as he looked across the faces grinning back at him — fellas such as Nathan Cleary, Coen Hess, Connor Watson, Curtis Scott — a worrying truth struck.
“I realised,” he says, “that every one of those boys had played first grade … everyone but me.”
Which hurt.
Especially given Tatola, even now with summer approaching, was worryingly overweight. That, and unsigned.
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The chunky Auburn discard had nothing for 2018 but a verbal agreement to train an off-season with South Sydney.
An opportunity, he knew, which guaranteed nothing but a dozen weeks playing human tackle bag for Sam Burgess.
“But I wasn’t getting a run anywhere else,” the 21-year-old shrugs. “So I took it. And now I’m here.”
Seated now with League Central after a rigorous Wednesday morning opposed session at Bunnies HQ, Tevita “Junior” Tatola is talking you through his unlikely rise from unwanted palooka to Dally M Rookie contender.
After 21 rounds, Tatola has not missed an NRL game with Souths.
Even better, and after shedding 10 kilograms, this rising interchange forward has also emerged as an unlucky hero for a Redfern outfit that, apart from leading the competition, Friday night faces archrivals the Roosters in an ANZ Stadium slobberknocker.
See, when either Tom or George Burgess leaves the field in Friday Night Football, it will be Tatola who takes up the slack. Holds the line. Charges the pill.
A role for which he has proved so strong this year, the youngster was also gifted an international debut with Tonga.
And yet how many of you could pick him from a police line-up?
Certainly Tatola doesn’t boast a cheer squad with the decibels of, say, Roosters rookie Victor Radley.
Nor a highlights reel like that Brisbane flyer Jamayne Isaako, the bookies’ early favourite for Dally M Rookie.
In fact, if he doesn’t have a Rabbitohs jersey on his back, Tatola insists, “there isn’t really anyone who knows who I am”.
Still, it’s been worse.
And for proof, rewind to the afternoon that Junior Kangaroos snap was taken.
When Tatola, coming off the interchange bench, would battle though a performance that, despite earning a 34-20 win over the Kiwis at Parramatta Stadium, would in the two years following look increasingly like his last in such illustrious company.
“Coming into that Junior Kangaroos game, I’d been carrying a foot injury,” the Rabbitohs prop recalls. “Had no idea what it was but during games, adrenaline would get me through.
“After that (representative) game, though, the foot got really sore and I was limping around.”
Which is when doctors discovered the Wests Tigers prodigy, and at that time the reigning National Youth Competition Player of the Year, was surviving matches despite having a torn ligament in his foot.
And just like that, season over.
“Which devastated me,” Tatola recalls. “And then being sidelined for so long, I struggled.
“I wasn’t in a good way at all.”
Worse, the kid tried filling his bouts of emptiness with KFC. “Fast foods, oily foods, all of it,” he continues.
“I was overweight and got really down.
“Then when I came back (in 2017), I wasn’t really doing much at Wests Tigers, either.
“I was sitting around watching all the guys from my Junior Kangaroos make first grade … I didn’t have a good headspace at all.”
And then, that Rabbitohs offer arrived.
No promises. Just come train and we’ll see how you go.
“And for that,” the bookend says, “I really have to thank Willie.”
More specifically, Willie Peters.
The Souths assistant coach who, back two years, not only coached the Tigers NYC side, but saw enough in Tatola for the co-captaincy.
“Junior wasn’t much of a talker,” Peters recalls. “But he was a great kid and a real leader.
“On-field, he really ripped in. Was incredibly respected.
“Same at training. He wasn’t the fittest guy in the squad, but Junior was always out there giving us his best.
“But it was when you got him away from all that … when it came to rehabilitation, diet, stuff like that … he just wasn’t where he needed to be.”
So why suggest him for the training contract?
“I knew the talent was there,” Peters says. “It was just a question of how much Junior wanted it.”
Wonderfully, Sam Burgess wondered, too.
“And I won’t forget it,” Tatola insists.
“My first day of training, Sammy took me aside and said: ‘Train hard here and you can become a part of this team’.
“He told me nobody knew what would happen if I was willing to work hard.
“It was the very first chat we had … and I’ve been hungry ever since.”
Hasn’t he what?
Apart from stripping down to 110kg — “at my heaviest last year I was 121kg”— Tatola has also reduced his skin-fold readings from 130 to 94.
“At the start of this season, nobody would’ve thought Junior would play every game,” Peters continues. “And while he did struggle with the intensity early, the senior players here now love playing alongside him.”
So what else can we tell you?
Well, apart from being one of seven boys — older brother Sio plays for Manly Marlins, younger brother Mateo with the Bulldogs SG Ball — the Bunnies prop also recently signed again for 2019, has mum’s wedding ring embedded in a tooth and easily explains why everyone calls him ‘Junior’.
“That’s my middle name,” he says. “I’m actually named Tevita, after my old man, but for as long as I can remember, everyone has called me Junior.
“So that’s fine. I just go with it.”
Elsewhere, Tatola is a product of Holy Cross College.
That, and the freshest face of a Tongan rugby league revolution.
Throw in, too, a product of the 2016 Junior Kangaroos … a side where every player has gone on to the NRL.
Originally published as Why Junior Tatola is quietly making a big noise at South Sydney
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