After a cruel injury derailed his entire 2022 season, Tommy Talau is back and rejuvenated for the upcoming season.
It has been 546 days since Tommy Talau played his last NRL first-grade game. Returning to full team training this pre-season, Talau missed the entire 2022 campaign due to suffering an ACL injury in the final round of the 2021 season.
However, before he endured the ACL injury, Talau had an amazing 2021 season. Playing all 22 games for the Tigers, the centre scored 11 tries. This added to his eight tries in 12 games the previous year.
"It's good to be back on the field. Got two games under my belt now so I'm looking forward to Round 1," Talau said to the media.
"It's good to look back then to see that I was playing some decent footy. I've had a really good pre-season building a good combination with Adam (Doueihi) and Nofa [David Nofoaluma] on my outside, so I think that for myself has given me a lot of confidence."
The son of former Bulldogs player Willie Talau, Tommy is fired up and determined to get going. Aiming to cement his spot in the starting team, he will play inside David Nofoaluma.
Talau spoke on his injury insisting that he is actually stronger on the side he injured. It will also be the first time he will play under Tim Sheens' playing style.
"It's actually stronger than my left now like my quad and my hamstrings. So that's given me a lot of confidence going into training and just trusting my body that I'm ready to go."
"Before the year I haven't really met Sheensy...Sheensy has been awesome."
"His style of footy that he's brought to the club is beneficial to the team that we have on paper with Ads [Adam Doueihi] and Brooksy [Luke Brooks]. They're great attacking players and I think that suits all of us."
Wests Tigers will come up against the Gold Coast Titans this Sunday at Leichhardt Oval.