{"id":606571,"date":"2026-04-14T16:21:16","date_gmt":"2026-04-14T16:21:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606571\/"},"modified":"2026-04-14T16:21:16","modified_gmt":"2026-04-14T16:21:16","slug":"nrl-news-2026-loko-pasifiki-tonga-request-to-speak-to-rivals-st-george-illawarra-dragons-mat-rogers-comments","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/606571\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2026 | Loko Pasifiki Tonga request to speak to rivals; St George Illawarra Dragons; Mat Rogers comments"},"content":{"rendered":"

Rugby league agent Mat Rogers has given a damning assessment of the Dragons<\/a>‘ current predicament<\/a>, explaining why Loko Pasifiki Tonga has requested to negotiate with rivals.<\/p>\n

The 20-year-old is part of the Rogers Sports Management stable but not a direct client of the former player.<\/p>\n

Pasifiki Tonga has not played first grade yet this season after playing 10 matches last year.<\/p>\n

READ MORE: Butters guilty of umpire abuse but mystery over why<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Eels star saves $1.8k with rare judiciary move<\/a><\/p>\n

READ MORE: Saint cops massive ban for homophobic slur towards ex teammate<\/a><\/p>\n

Rogers believes the club thinks he’s “not up to scratch”.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Loko Pasifiki Tonga.\u00a0NRL Imagery<\/p>\n

“He’s a tremendous young man,” Rogers said on SEN.<\/p>\n

“He played 10 games for the Dragons last year. He had a big off-season. He came back [to the NSW Cup] last week, ran for 250 metres, 70 post-contact metres, scored a try.<\/p>\n

“They’ve obviously got an opinion of him that, he’s not up to scratch. He doesn’t feel like he’s being developed and I guess we agree.”<\/p>\n

Watch the 2026 NRL season live and free on Nine and 9Now<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Pasifiki Tonga joins Jaydn Su’A as the second player in a week wanting out<\/a>, with the latter choosing not to activate a player option for next season.<\/p>\n

Rogers said the youngster is “totally flabbergasted” with how he’s been treated and “not coached”. <\/p>\n

“He doesn’t know what to do. That’s the problem,” he said.<\/p>\n

“Whether or not they will (let him go), they might dig their heels in, they’ve got some more pressing issues in relation to winning games of football.<\/p>\n

“There’s a very frustrated young man there who’s busting his butt and he’s playing the house down and scored two tries in the three matches he’s played (in NSW Cup).<\/p>\n

“He thinks he deserves an opportunity, and now it’s not sour grapes, he just feels like he’s not being told what to do.”<\/p>\n

Rogers added that the forward will be on the radar of clubs if he’s allowed to leave.<\/p>\n

The Dragons currently sit second in NSW Cup and are equal on points with the first-placed Knights and have one game in hand. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Rugby league agent Mat Rogers has given a damning assessment of the Dragons‘ current predicament, explaining why Loko…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":606572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-606571","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\/606571","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=606571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/606571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/606572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=606571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=606571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=606571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}