{"id":777067,"date":"2026-07-03T19:31:20","date_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:31:20","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/777067\/"},"modified":"2026-07-03T19:31:20","modified_gmt":"2026-07-03T19:31:20","slug":"special-milestone-for-bunty-afoa","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/777067\/","title":{"rendered":"Special milestone for Bunty Afoa"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>The sacrifice of experienced prop Bunty Afoa to leave his young family in New Zealand to keep his NRL career alive has not been lost on the Wests Tigers.<\/p>\n<p>Afoa runs out for his 150th NRL game at Kogarah this Saturday in a career that began with the Warriors in Auckland in 2016.<\/p>\n<p>The hard running prop played 145 games in nine seasons for the Warriors before joining the Tigers this year.<\/p>\n<p>&#13;<br \/>\n  &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n    <img decoding=\"async\" class=\"inline-image__image o-shadowed-box\" loading=\"lazy\" src=\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/07\/81448776_afoab-fans-260620_-bc_11171_2026620143952.jpg\"\/>&#13;<br \/>\n  &#13;<br \/>\n  &#13;<br \/>\n    &#13;<br \/>\n  &#13;<\/p>\n<p>Wests Tigers Coach Benji Marshall praised 29-year-old Afoa for putting the team first ahead of his own family after accepting a development contract to take up an opportunity in Sydney.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cHe\u2019s got a three-month-old baby living back in New Zealand with his partner and he&#8217;s over here still chasing his dream, so it&#8217;s tough for him. He is so unselfish,\u2019\u2019 Marshall said.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cBunty&#8217;s had to bide his time to start the season with us because our forwards were going so well to start the year.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cI think the last few weeks he has stamped his authority around. He\u2019s still got what it takes to start in the NRL.<\/p>\n<p>\u201cWe love what he&#8217;s brings. He&#8217;s giving us the ability to bring Fonua (Pole) off the bench where he has been impactful as well.<\/p>\n<p>\u201c(To reach) 150 games, we\u2019re proud of Bunty and we\u2019re happy to have him at the Club.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The sacrifice of experienced prop Bunty Afoa to leave his young family in New Zealand to keep his&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":777068,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-777067","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\/777067","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=777067"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/777067\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/777068"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=777067"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=777067"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=777067"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}