{"id":29756,"date":"2025-07-29T10:39:24","date_gmt":"2025-07-29T10:39:24","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/29756\/"},"modified":"2025-07-29T10:39:24","modified_gmt":"2025-07-29T10:39:24","slug":"real-story-behind-aaron-woods-v-billy-slater-state-of-origin-feud-ryan-hoffman-reaction","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/29756\/","title":{"rendered":"Real story behind Aaron Woods v Billy Slater State of Origin feud, Ryan Hoffman reaction"},"content":{"rendered":"

Former NSW Blues forward Aaron Woods<\/a> has denied his son ever took a photo with Billy Slater<\/a>, weeks after his comments about the Maroons coach sparked a feud.<\/p>\n

Woods called Slater a “grub” in the lead up to Origin II, sparking a heated response from Slater’s former teammate Ryan Hoffman, who labelled Woods a “coward” on the ABC.<\/a><\/p>\n

Hoffman said Woods had asked Slater to take a photo with his son earlier in the season, repeating a claim initially made by Maroons great Gorden Tallis.<\/p>\n

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However, Woods said a photo was never taken and revealed he contacted Hoffman in the aftermath.<\/p>\n

“Ryan Hoffman came out and called me a coward, and then he backflipped and said he didn’t,” Woods told Paul Kent on the Kenty Primetime podcast.<\/p>\n

“We had a conversation. I said, ‘look you can call me whatever you want, just don’t ever mention my son’s name again with things that didn’t happen’, because Buster (Woods’ son) didn’t get a photo with Billy.”<\/p>\n

Woods clarified how the story was blown out of proportion, stating the moment in question occurred during Magic Round while he was commentating for Triple M.<\/p>\n

Watch the 2025 NRL premiership live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

“We’re up at the top boxes of Suncorp Stadium, I was going to take my little fella downstairs, Buster, because he was going to be a ball boy for the 3 o’clock game on the Saturday arvo which was Newcastle v Souths,” Woods said.<\/p>\n

“As I was going down the lift, we were right at the back, everyone jumped in, then we get down to I think level three, that’s where the Channel 9 and Fox boxes are.<\/p>\n

“Billy Slater rocks in with his producer from Channel 9. We go downstairs, everyone gets out, Billy’s there at the front, I literally walk out, I walk past, I shake his hand, ‘Hey Bill’, I say to Buster to shake his hand.<\/p>\n

“Once he shakes his hand we walk away, Buster goes ‘Who’s that Dad?’<\/p>\n

“I go ‘Mate, he’s one of the best fullbacks to ever play the game’. My young bloke is only five. And that is all that happened.<\/p>\n

“So from that, there’s only three people that would’ve said something to Gordy about that. So someone’s dropped the lip and had a little complaint, wasn’t too happy.”<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Woods playing for NSW in 2017.\u00a0Getty<\/p>\n

The story blew up partly due to Slater’s reaction to the comments, when he mistakenly referenced late Maroons coach Paul Green<\/a>, who suffered from CTE, when suggesting Woods’ comments could impact a person’s mental health.<\/p>\n

In the end, Queensland rallied to come back after the saga and win the next two games, and Woods’ admitted he felt somewhat responsible.<\/p>\n

“A little bit. I was so confident because game one I don’t even think NSW played well,” he said.<\/p>\n

“To win up at Suncorp, to be up there in enemy territory and the way they played, I would’ve thought we’d go to Perth quite excited.<\/p>\n

“You go over there and then the performance in that first half, I was just like ‘Oh my god, far out, what have I done here?’ Just really stirred the pot.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Former NSW Blues forward Aaron Woods has denied his son ever took a photo with Billy Slater, weeks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":29757,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-29756","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29756","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=29756"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/29756\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/29757"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=29756"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=29756"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=29756"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}