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\n Daniel Tupou served notice of his aerial ability with a hat-trick against Wests Tigers in his second NRL game in 2025.
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Sydney Roosters have waited eight weeks to break out the bubbly to celebrate the club\u2019s top tryscorer, Daniel Tupou, in his 300th NRL game \u2013 and the day has finally arrived.\u00a0<\/p>\n
The 35-year-old now in his 15th season at the one club has been stranded on 299 since early May after injuring his left calf at Magic Round eight weeks ago.\u00a0<\/p>\n
But all he needs now is to pass a final fitness test later this week and he will be running out at his beloved Allianz Stadium to play Parramatta on Saturday night.<\/p>\n
\u201cFor someone play 300 games in the NRL is a pretty crazy achievement but to do it at one club and to do it the way Toops has\u2026 you can\u2019t say enough words about it,\u201d said Roosters centre Billy Smith.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhenever you pull the jersey on every week and look across and see Toops you\u2019re always pretty confident in the result.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cYou don\u2019t get to play 300 games unless you\u2019re a really hard-working, consistent human being.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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He\u2019s paved the way for the Polynesian footy players and playing with him has been one of the best privileges of my career<\/p>\n
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\n\t\tBilly Smith
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It is also a timely comeback to the Roosters squad as they wrestle with the Knights and Dolphins to stay in the top four.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAt this time of year we want to consolidate our position in the top four but more importantly get our footy on,\u201d Smith said.<\/p>\n
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Daniel Tupou edges closer to Slater’s try tally<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve had all our byes now so it\u2019s about getting all the boys back and refreshed from Origin and attacking the back end of the year.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Tupou\u2019s return also comes on \u2018Roosters Forever\u2019 day, aka Old Boys’ day, with the players wearing the 1976 strip used in the World Club Challenge win over St Helens, which was the first to carry the sponsor\u2019s name (then City Ford) on the front \u2013 a trait other clubs soon picked up.\u00a0<\/p>\n
For Connor Watson, it will be his last Old Boys’ day as he moves to the Dragons for the 2027 season before becoming a foundation player for the PNG Chiefs in 2028.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWorking with these good people for the last time over the next three months is making me fairly nostalgic,\u201d Watson said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve got plenty of jerseys home in storage and when I\u2019m finished in the game I\u2019ll get them out and tell the kids all the stories of my Roosters days.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Near the top of that list will be his time with Tupou.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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\n Daniel Tupou served notice of his aerial ability with a hat-trick against Wests Tigers in his second NRL game in 2025.
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\u201cI\u2019ve been very luck to play with Toops for a long time… back to when I debuted in 2016,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019s just so consistent but he does it at such a high level. He worked out what his strengths were really early in his career and has just done it on repeat every game since.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cHe\u2019ll go down as one of the greatest Roosters ever. It\u2019s been an honour to play with him.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe can talk about his tryscoring, but whenever the game gets tough he\u2019s always the first to put his hand up to get us out of yardage.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWhat he\u2019s done has really changed the game for wingers about the work they do in the backfield.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Sydney Roosters have waited eight weeks to break out the bubbly to celebrate the club\u2019s top tryscorer, Daniel…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":781972,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-781971","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\/781971","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=781971"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/781971\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/781972"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=781971"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=781971"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=781971"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}