This week’s guest on episode 17 of Behind The Roar is one of our premiership heroes from 2005 and Wests Tigers Player #68 Dene Halatau.
Episode 17 of Behind The Roar will drop on Thursday afternoon and is available on Apple, Spotify and YouTube.
Halatau played 10 seasons with Wests Tigers over two stints, punctuated by a four-year period with Canterbury Bulldogs.
After hanging up the boots at the end of the 2016 NRL season, he has forged a successful career at NRL HQ in varying roles, both in player wellbeing, and these days in the injury assessment space.
He has also adapted well to life in the media as a regular on ABC Radio's rugby league commentary team, but acknowledges that many footballers post retirement, aren’t so fortunate.
He talks about how the transition from being a full time professional player to retirement can be brutal for some.
“What the player wellbeing programs are designed to do is prepare athletes for life after football, to give them a softer landing into the next chapters of their life.
Some really struggle to cope with the transition but the game is doing some really good work in this space.
Dene Halatau
Halatau talks fondly of his time at Wests Tigers where he chalked up 180 games for the club.
As teenage hooker Tallyn Da Silva prepares for his first NRL appearance this Saturday, Halatau recounts the day he and Robbie Farah made their NRL debuts together in Round 13, 2003 at Leichhardt Oval against Manly.
He had a stack of family and friends at the game that day, but when he still hadn’t entered the match at the 76th minute, he was fearful they’d all made the trip for nothing.
He tells us how his first game came out of the blue, when he got the call from coach Tim Sheens.
“Sheensy rang and just told to me to be the captain’s run the day before the game,” he says.
Here I was, a centre replacing a prop, and so I guess my future value as a utility player was there from day one.
Dene Halatau
He talks about the 2005 premiership and his two try performance in the preliminary final against the Dragons.
A player who did generally get quite nervous before games, he says on that occasion he was strangely very calm pre-game.
Wests Tigers fans were well outnumbered by the Red V faithful that memorable night at the SFS but Halatau remembers it like it was yesterday.
“That was probably the best atmosphere I think I ever experienced in my career,” he says.
Running out to that roar, I remember there was just so much energy from our supporters.
Dene Halatau
Just like former premiership-winning teammate John Skandalis, Halatau would hang up the boots one appearance shy of the 250-game milestone.
