The man from the Western Australia gold fields provided a gem of a try for the Wests Tigers in front of a raucous Leichhardt Oval crowd on Thursday night.<\/p>\n
Royce Hunt\u2019s 40-metre charging run through the middle of the Raiders for his second try in 2026 also fired a warning shot to his old club Cronulla and produced food-for-thought for Samoan selectors on what the prop might be able to conjure at World Cup time.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
Kalgoorlie-born Hunt will play his 99th NRL game in Round 9 against the Sharks at the ground he spent five years at \u2013 Ocean Protect Stadium.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cThe texts will start flying after that try,\u201d Hunt told NRL.com after the 33-14 win over the Raiders.<\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I imagine they\u2019ll keep coming thick and fast all week.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
In his second year at the joint venture, Hunt already is 1-0 up after Wests Tigers enjoyed a 20-18 win over the Sharks in round eight last season.\u00a0<\/p>\n
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Marvel at this Royce Hunt footwork!<\/p>\n
\u201cThey\u2019ll be coming for me but I\u2019m already one-up against them and told them they\u2019ll have to work hard to stop me getting to two-nil,” he said.<\/p>\n
No-one could stop Hunt last night as he latched onto a short pass from his lock Alex Twal just inside the 40-metre line.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAlex was the man. He finally passed to me and we get through,\u201d Hunt laughed.<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019ve been practising that a lot so I\u2019m glad it actually came out in a game.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
Hunt didn\u2019t look for support \u2013 he just went for the northern end of Leichhardt Oval like a freight train.<\/p>\n
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Weekes with a tackle for the ages!<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m a front-rower. I can only see the line – I don\u2019t see either side of me,\u201d he said.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cI only saw one person in front of me and I knew I just had to beat them.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n
That unlucky soul was fullback Kaeo Weekes, who had saved a try minutes earlier when he wrapped up Adam Doueihi with a classic ball-and-all tackle.<\/p>\n
But Sharks defenders will have more to worry about than just Hunt, as the Wests Tigers forwards are flushed with skill.<\/p>\n
Exhibit \u2018A\u2019 would be Samuela Finau\u2019s around-the-corner pass for Doueihi\u2019s second try against Canberra.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cSamuela\u2019s pass will be in anyone\u2019s highlights. Our whole forward pack frankly is doing well,\u201d Hunt said.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAlex Twal played 80 (minutes) and got some good numbers so he might be eligible alongside Terrell (May) for an Origin jersey,\u201d he said of Twal\u2019s 22 runs for 178 metres, a try assist and 57 tackles.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cTerrell has been in that conversation for two years now, so hopefully one of them gets a crack. Have they seen Terrell\u2019s numbers the past few games?” he said.<\/p>\n
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Terrell May Try<\/p>\n
If not, here they are: for the past three weeks May has topped 200 running metres \u2013 224 against the Knights, 236 against the Broncos and 201 against the Raiders.\u00a0<\/p>\n
He had 16 tackle-breaks across those three games, and three line-breaks.\u00a0\u00a0<\/p>\n
It\u2019s providing inspiration for his Wests Tigers teammates and making training and playing as a group more enjoyable.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s such a nice vibe around the place,\u201d Hunt said. \u201cThe boys definitely enjoy being around each other and that means we enjoy our footy too.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cWe\u2019re happy with how we\u2019re going. There\u2019s still always improvements to be made but we\u2019ll take it win by win.\u201d<\/p>\n
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Adam Doueihi dominates<\/p>\n
For Hunt personally, as he closes in on 100 NRL games \u2013 to add to his 98 in NSW Cup \u2013 he\u2019s quick to point to what\u2019s different for him this year.\u00a0<\/p>\n
\u201cAbout seven kilos different, and that\u2019s quite a difference. My knees feel good and for once I had a decent pre-season \u2013 my first good one in a few years,” he said.<\/p>\n
\u201cIt\u2019s good to get a full pre-season in. I feel so much better for it.\u201d\u00a0<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"The man from the Western Australia gold fields provided a gem of a try for the Wests Tigers…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":395026,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-395025","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395025","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=395025"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395025\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/395026"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=395025"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=395025"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=395025"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}