NRL: Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck setting off-field standards too

07/03/2019
Grant Chapman

Inspirational Warriors captain Roger Tuivasa-Sheck is determined his club will set a high off-field standard for other NRL outfits to follow over the coming season.

Over the summer, the Australian rugby league competition has been rocked by scandal, with Penrith Panthers half Tyrone May the latest implicated in a sex-tape controversy.

The NRL has threatened to take the power to punish players away from clubs, who may not necessarily have the code's best interests at heart.

Tuivasa-Sheck, anointed as the competition's best player last season, has watched the carnage from this side of the Tasman, and knows he and his teammates have a responsibility to the game.

While the Warriors are determined to return to the playoffs for a second successive year, their lofty standards are not confined to the playing field.

"It's tough, what we're going through at the moment, with all the off-field issues," the star fullback told Newshub. "That's what we're trying to set here at our club - a culture and a standard, where players are not just being good footy players, but good young men or older men.

"Our coach [Stephen Kearney] always talks about how we're not only football players, but we're humans first. We're dads, we're brothers, we're uncles, so we've got to set a good example.

"We do inspire a lot of younger boys to be like us, so we have to show their parents that league players are good. That's what we're trying to do at the Warriors."

The Warriors have largely avoided the recent controversy. Their last public scandal was probably May 2016, when six players were dropped to reserve grade, after a night of pills/energy drink cocktails went awry.

The following year, Bodene Thompson - one of those six - was also caught up in group sex claims.

Kearney took over as Warriors coach in late 2016 and of those players, only prop Sam Lisone is still with the club.

Newshub.