![\"Alofi'ana](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/05\/alofiana-khan-pereira-of-the-warriors-celebrates-his-try-nz-3DHLC7BUCFCR5IRR4XN64O47XY.jpg\")
<\/p>\nAlofi’ana Khan-Pereira remembers all too well the troubled times under coach Des Hasler when he battled to crack a smile at the Gold Coast Titans.<\/p>\n
But now he is loving life, and thriving, under Andrew Webster at the Warriors. <\/p>\n
His new teammates can’t believe Khan-Pereira’s horror stories about the Titans, coached then by Hasler.<\/p>\n
The try-scoring ace fell out of Hasler’s favour and contended with hamstring issues during a tough final season at the struggling Titans in 2025.<\/p>\n
The now-axed Hasler at times preferred Jaylan de Groot, Allan Fitzgibbon and Jojo Fifita to speedy winger Khan-Pereira despite him scoring 53 tries in 54 games for the Titans.<\/p>\n
They battled to avoid the wooden spoon eventually finishing 16th, and it deflated the local product.<\/p>\n
“It was pretty self-explanatory [at the Titans]. We were where we didn’t want to sit on the table,” Khan-Pereira told AAP.<\/p>\n
“It is tough losing, you don’t fall out of love for the game but you don’t come to training smiling, do you? It’s heavy. If you don’t win, it’s a different training session on Monday.”<\/p>\n
Gold Coast released Khan-Pereira from the final year of his contract to join the Warriors, where he also struggled for game time early in 2026.<\/p>\n
But Khan-Pereira has since crossed for tryscoring doubles in three of four games since Roger Tuivasa-Sheck’s move to the centres cleared a spot on the wing.<\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Alofi’ana Khan-Pereira of the Warriors celebrates his try, NZ Warriors v Gold Coast Titans (Source: Photosport)<\/p>\n
It’s made the 24-year-old grateful for a fresh start.<\/p>\n
“I just got out of there [Gold Coast] in a place I didn’t really want to stay at. Bigger and better things here, I don’t regret it at all,” he said.<\/p>\n
“I love New Zealand and I’m loving the boys… I’m just so happy and still got a big year ahead of us.”<\/p>\n
Webster’s calmer presence has proven a change of pace as compared to that of two-time premiership winning coach Hasler.<\/p>\n
Hasler made headlines in 2025 for a video that captured him furiously ordering players out of the dressing-room showers for his post-match address.<\/p>\n
“It’s new school, from old school ‘Dessie’. It’s different, it’s very different [at the Warriors],” Khan-Pereira said.<\/p>\n
“I’ve got a lot of funny stories that I tell the boys that they don’t believe. If you were there, you’d understand.”<\/p>\n
Before joining the Warriors, Khan-Pereira had admired Webster’s ability to inspire his players into career-best form.<\/p>\n
Mitch Barnett, Tanah Boyd, Erin Clark and Jackson Ford are among those to have transformed from journeymen into elite NRL talents under Webster.<\/p>\n
“I have massive respect for ‘Webby’. He was one of the reasons why I moved over to New Zealand,” Khan-Pereira said.<\/p>\n
“Just how he understands each player’s position. You make a decision and he’ll back you. It’s the confidence that he gives in you and then you display that out on the field.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Alofi’ana Khan-Pereira remembers all too well the troubled times under coach Des Hasler when he battled to crack…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":658268,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[64,22065,63,158,85,3198],"class_list":["post-658267","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-au","tag-auckland","tag-australia","tag-nrl","tag-sports","tag-warriors"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658267","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=658267"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/658267\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/658268"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=658267"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=658267"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=658267"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}