{"id":76556,"date":"2025-08-18T04:03:08","date_gmt":"2025-08-18T04:03:08","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/76556\/"},"modified":"2025-08-18T04:03:08","modified_gmt":"2025-08-18T04:03:08","slug":"whyte-took-it-personally-to-replace-roosters-great","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/76556\/","title":{"rendered":"Whyte ‘took it personally’ to replace Roosters great"},"content":{"rendered":"

Naufahu Whyte is having a breakout year for the Roosters. (Dan Himbrechts\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

Trent Robinson told Naufahu Whyte he was the man to fill the void left by Jared Waerea-Hargreaves, and the Sydney Roosters prop took the challenge “personally”.<\/p>\n

Less than a year later, Whyte is one of the NRL’s most improved players in a Roosters side firming for an unlikely finals berth.<\/p>\n

Whyte had one of his best games in a breakout year on Friday night, scoring tries either side of halftime to help Easts stun third-placed Canterbury.<\/p>\n

Whyte invoked memories of the Roosters’ most-capped player Waerea-Hargreaves as he burst through four defenders for the second of those four-pointers.<\/p>\n

\"Trent
\n Coach Trent Robinson’s decision on Jared Waerea-Hargreaves’ replacement is bearing fruit. (Mark Evans\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

The Roosters’ million-dollar question this year had been how the club would cope with losing 1279 games of experience at the end of 2024, 316 of those belonging to long-time forward pack leader Waerea-Hargreaves.<\/p>\n

Roosters coach Robinson identified Whyte, who had played only 34 games before 2025, as the man with the answer.<\/p>\n

“We obviously had our chats there. He was always telling me, ‘You’re stepping into that next role now’,” Whyte said.<\/p>\n

“At the end of the day, you can have the talks with coaches and stuff, but if you don’t action it throughout pre-season and then coming into the season, then there’s no point, so I kind of took that personally.<\/p>\n

“I always tell everyone, ever since Jared and that all left, I just felt for myself I had to step up.”<\/p>\n

Whyte grew in confidence after spending time with New Zealand’s star-studded forward rotation on international duty last year.<\/p>\n

“Learning off the likes of (Joe) Tapine, James Fisher-Harris, you’ve got Moses Leota, all those boys, championship players, it just built my game so much,” Whyte said.<\/p>\n

Now Whyte is averaging the fifth-most metres of any middle forward in the NRL at 155 per game, and trails only Addin Fonua-Blake for average post-contact metres among props.<\/p>\n

\"Naufahu
\n Naufahu Whyte’s double helped the Roosters stun third-placed Canterbury. (Dan Himbrechts\/AAP PHOTOS)<\/p>\n

His form was rewarded with a three-year contract extension in June.<\/p>\n

“It’s definitely my breakout year, definitely my best season so far,” Whyte said.<\/p>\n

The Roosters head into the last three rounds of the regular season in the box seat for a top-eight spot after some pundits predicted their mass exodus could put finals off the table in 2025.<\/p>\n

They are in eighth spot, a win clear of ninth, and face bottom-four sides in two of their remaining three games.<\/p>\n

Whyte says he and fellow props Spencer Leniu and Lindsay Collins will continue channelling hit man Waerea-Hargreaves as the season heats up.<\/p>\n

“It’s obviously working out for us. We’re reaping the rewards and we’re getting the wins,” he said.<\/p>\n

License this article<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Naufahu Whyte is having a breakout year for the Roosters. (Dan Himbrechts\/AAP PHOTOS) Trent Robinson told Naufahu Whyte…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":76557,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[4764,4765,64,63,4766,1348,3355,3359,761,762,44,3356,3354,3357,158,85,3358,1346],"class_list":["post-76556","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-aap","tag-aapnews","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-australian-news","tag-breaking-news","tag-daily-news","tag-global-news","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-news","tag-news-app","tag-news-headlines","tag-news-today","tag-nrl","tag-sports","tag-today-news","tag-world-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76556","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=76556"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/76556\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/76557"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=76556"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=76556"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=76556"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}