\n And that appears set to involve some serious off-season graft between the pair, whose friendship stretches back to their teenage years.\n<\/p>\n
\n Pangai Jr\u2019s move to The Wire for 2026 was confirmed in July, with the prop signing a one-year deal having spent the 2025 campaign with Catalans Dragons.\n<\/p>\n
\n It is a move that will see him play alongside Yates at senior level for the very first time after the two spent many of their formative years together in Newcastle, New South Wales.\n<\/p>\n
\n They played in the Newcastle Knights junior grades together before Pangai Jr moved to Canberra Raiders, from whom he moved to Brisbane Broncos where his senior breakthrough arrived.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI went to school with Tevita and he\u2019s a really, really good friend of mine,\u201d Yates recalled.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cHe moved up to Newcastle when he was 14 so we started playing some junior stuff together around then.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI went to Hunter Sports High with him and then we both moved back to Lambton High to have another couple of years there.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cHis family moved to Canberra after that but I\u2019ve always stayed really close with him.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n While both are no doubt relishing the opportunity to play together again, there is some serious work to be done before then.\n<\/p>\n
\n It means Yates is set to go into \u201cpersonal trainer mode\u201d when Pangai Jr arrives from France, but he believes the front-rower is coming with the right frame of mind.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019ll be doing a lot of training together \u2013 I\u2019m not going home and he\u2019s not either, he\u2019s coming straight here from France,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cHe\u2019s coming with a good mindset \u2013 he\u2019s been speaking to Gards (Ade Gardner, Wire head of performance) about where he needs to be when he comes in.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cI\u2019ll be back and forth to here through the off-season to train with him before we get into pre-season.\u201d\n<\/p>\n
\n The aim is for Pangai Jr to get back to \u2013 or something close to \u2013 his destructive best, when he was regarded as one of the world\u2019s premier front-rowers \u2013 he played State of Origin rugby league for New South Wales as recently as 2023 and has six caps for Tonga under his belt.\n<\/p>\n
\n He has not hit those heights in Perpignan, so is Warrington the right environment for him to do so?\n<\/p>\n
\n Yates reckons that will be the case not just for his great friend and future teammate but for several Wire players.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe need to get him fit and motivated, and I know the guys here will \u2013 we\u2019re going to have a big, big pre-season coming in,\u201d he said.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWe\u2019ll get him fit and flying and I know he\u2019ll be a big force next year.\n<\/p>\n
\n \u201cWith the mentality we\u2019re going to be in for next year and the way things will be run, I think we\u2019ll see the best of a lot of our players.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"And that appears set to involve some serious off-season graft between the pair, whose friendship stretches back to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":172755,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-172754","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172754","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=172754"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/172754\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/172755"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=172754"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=172754"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=172754"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}