Exiled Tiger Joey Leilua says his falling out with the club was in part due to his willingness to “speak up when something is wrong”.
Leilua, a two-time Dally M Centre of the Year, fell out of favour with Tigers coach Michael Maguire before his contract ran out at the end of the 2021 season.
After playing 14 games with the club last year, he played just seven games this year after losing his spot in the side.
The out of contract 29-year-old is currently preparing for a boxing bout with former NRL star Chris Heighington, but he spoke today about his exit from Maguire’s side.
Leilua claims it all fell apart for him the moment he spoke up when things went wrong for the Tigers, who fell short again of finals football with a 13th-place finish.
“I am a person where I’ve come to clubs and you speak up when something is wrong – and there were plenty of things going wrong at that club,” he told Fox Sports.
“I spoke up and it kind of like, got me in trouble.”
Leilua, who played 91 games for the Raiders, said he felt more encouraged to speak up while under coach Ricky Stuart.
“When I played in Canberra, we all spoke up, didn’t matter if you played two games, one game, zero games; if you trained with us in pre-season you had a say in the team… But we didn’t have that at the Wests Tigers,” he added.
“Nobody really spoke up and everyone was kind of hesitant to lose their position in the team, where I was different, I came from a club where everyone spoke up and I always spoke up which unfortunately got me to where I am now.
“Maybe I should just keep my mouth shut a bit.”
Leilua said the moment he got to the Tigers at the start of 2020, everything felt “totally different” to how it was in Canberra, a club that made the grand final in 2019.
“(Stuart) was like the person where if you see something, you talk about it, everyone spoke up so that’s where I thought I was at with the club, you speak up and that’s how you got the best out of each other,” Leilua said.
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“When I got to the Wests Tigers it was totally different, it was everything he (Maguire) wanted and I am the person who will do it your way, and did it, then it wasn’t working so I had to speak up and that’s a part of who I am, I won’t let something go on for so long if it’s not working.”
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