\u201cThe anthems were playing, and my mind raced back to lots of memories with my mum and making us sing the national anthem of Samoa in the back of the car,\u201d Haas said at the time.<\/p>\n
Haas was surrounded by two of his brothers in the Broncos\u2019 dressing room on Sunday night and made it clear his sole purpose in life was to be a good role model for his family, friends and heritage.<\/p>\n
Loading<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m trying to be a role model and show them there\u2019s light at the end of the tunnel,\u201d Haas said.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo come from what we\u2019ve come from, you don\u2019t get much, you\u2019re not expected to be here.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo be here now, hopefully I can show heaps of kids where I\u2019m from that there is light at the end of the tunnel, you just need to put your head down, work hard and have faith.\u201d<\/p>\n
He also made a point of thanking Maguire and carried a baseball bat for a few hours, which was a nod to the coach known to swing a wooden Louisville Slugger to help ram home any game-day messaging.<\/p>\n
\u201c\u2018Madge\u2019 [Maguire] deserves all the credit in the world, he came here, people made up stories about him and about us, but we stuck solid, we stuck by each other, and continued to work hard \u2013 we\u2019re reaping the rewards now,\u201d Haas said.<\/p>\n
Haas will join the leadership group for Samoa, with Parramatta\u2019s Junior Paulo and Wests Tigers playmaker Jarome Luai to co-captain in the tournament that also features New Zealand.<\/p>\n
Gardiner said Taylan May\u2019s versatility to play centre and wing on both sides of the field was a huge bonus, while Tyrone May was still a chance of joining his brothers Taylan and Terrell for the latter stages of the Pacific Championships, depending on how he pulled up after this weekend\u2019s Super League grand final.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cThe anthems were playing, and my mind raced back to lots of memories with my mum and making…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":194731,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-194730","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194730","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=194730"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/194730\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/194731"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=194730"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=194730"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=194730"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}