Long the catch cry of State of Origin football, ‘mate vs mate’ will take on a whole new dimension when the 2026 World Cup pits an array of superstars against one another at the end of an NRL season built around brotherhood and camaraderie.<\/p>\n
After going into battle side by side for eight months in pursuit of a premiership, the players will swap club colours for national jerseys and go their separate ways to chase World Cup glory.<\/p>\n
For Roosters young gun Rob Toia, the prosect of locking horns with clubmate Victor Radley when England and Tonga collide at HBF Park in Perth brings a cheeky smile to his face.<\/p>\n
“With most\u00a0of those [England] players coming from Super League it will be good to test ourselves against them – they play a fairly brutal style of footy,” Toia said.<\/p>\n
“They will want to prove a point after the Ashes and their fan support will be huge.<\/p>\n
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England v Mate Ma’a Tonga – Game 3<\/p>\n
“Playing against Radley and Billy Smith if he gets a call-up, I’d love to go head-to-head with him.<\/p>\n
“It would be pretty weird seeing Rads crush on Daniel Tupou… I’m not sure Rads would do it because everyone loves ‘Toopy’.”<\/p>\n
At just 21, Toia is still pinching himself after a breakout 2025 season that saw him make his NRL debut for the Roosters in Round 1 before earning his first Origin cap and helping the Maroons to a series victory.<\/p>\n
After being named Dally M rookie of the year in grand final week he put the icing on the cake with a Test debut for Tonga in the Pacific Championships, part of a star-studded backline that included Isaiya Katoa, Isaiah Iongi, Paul Alamoti and Tupou.<\/p>\n
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Tonga XIII with a fierce response<\/p>\n
Back-to-back losses to Samoa and New Zealand proved a tough pill to swallow but nothing could take away from the pride Toia felt as he donned the red jersey and stood arm in arm with his Tonga brothers.<\/p>\n
“Being in the Tonga camp was a beautiful experience,” he said.<\/p>\n
“It was a touching moment being able to reconnect with my Tongan heritage because having spent most of my life in Australia I have been a bit distant from my Tongan side.<\/p>\n
“Before the actual campaign started we got the chance to go back to Tonga and be amongst the people and it was the best thing ever and I am just so grateful for it.<\/p>\n
“You feel it as soon as you walk into the airport, there\u2019s MMT [Mate Ma’a Tonga] signs all over and pictures of the boys. There was so much love for the boys.”<\/p>\n
After opening their World Cup campaign against England, the Tongan side heads to Sydney to play Lebanon for a blockbuster showdown with Samoa on November 1 at CommBank Stadium.<\/p>\n
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Robert Toia collects his 2025 NRL Dally M Rookie of the Year award<\/p>\n
The Tonga-Samoa clash at Suncorp Stadium was a highlight of the recent Pacific Championships and the emotion will again be off the scale when they meet on the world stage next year.<\/p>\n
“It’s so good to see Tonga and Samoa rising and with all the big names switch allegiances it makes for a better World Cup,” said Toia.<\/p>\n
“From the boys\u2019 perspective it wasn\u2019t really ideal how we played [against Samoa in Brisbane] and a lot of emotions are still there.<\/p>\n
“We have a lot of things to prove and I can\u2019t wait for next year.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Long the catch cry of State of Origin football, ‘mate vs mate’ will take on a whole new…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":310767,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-310766","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\/310766","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=310766"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/310766\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/310767"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=310766"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=310766"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=310766"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}