Pangai Jr joined the Robins last month
Picture by Olly Hassell/SWpix.com – 12/06/2026 – Rugby League – Betfred Super League Round 14 – Hull KR v York Knights – Sewell Group Craven Park, Hull, England – New signing Tevita Pangai Jr of Hull KR warming up before kick-off(Image: SW Pix)
Willie Peters believes Tevita Pangai Jr could have a big role to play for Hull KR over the second half of the Super League season.
Pangai Jr arrived at Craven Park last month and has spent the last few weeks training and building up his fitness with the Robins.
However, he was deemed to be fit enough to feature in Friday night’s 38-6 win over York Knights on Friday night and he made a huge impact on the game.
He immediately lifted the crowd in east Hull and on the back of his first run with the ball, KR scored the try they needed to take the game away from the Knights.
He went on to produce three offloads, while he also showed just how much of a threat he can be with the ball in hand.
“I was happy,” Peters said when asked about the forward. “He’s come to the club and he hasn’t played for nine months.
“He’s nowhere near his peak fitness so he’s only going to improve. I thought he did a great job for us. I was happy with the energy he brought and his offloads.
“I know what Tevita can do, I coached Tevita at a younger age in rep level. I’ve watched his career closely and he’s gone on to play Origin.
“He needs to be in a good environment and he’s in a good environment where he can thrive. He’s come over now and he’s doing the right things through his actions, he’s eating better, he’s doing more fitness, we’re only going to see improvement from him so I thought it was a decent start.
“In the space of a week and a half he’s lost a lot of weight and made a lot of traction in that short space of time. Let’s see where he is in a month because he’s a big man. We’ve just got work out the best way to play him.”
Asked about how much of a weapon his offloads could be, Peters said: “Sam Luckley can offload, we have guys in our team who can offload, we don’t go out to say to offload but we’ve got our principles around offloading and what that looks like and firstly it’s running hard and that’s what Tevita did
“He ran hard first and once he created there was an opportunity to offload and he did. It’s hard to defend.
“Get him one to one, he’s very hard to tackle and get him two on one, he’s still hard to tackle. He draws a lot of defenders in. If they do tackle him, when he gets a quick play the ball there’s going to be space elsewhere. We’ll see the best of him down the track.”
KR weren’t exactly short of middle options when Pangai Jr made the move to KR and Jai Whitbread was the man to miss out this week.
“It puts pressure on guys, it’s what we want,” the head coach added. “We want to have a full compliment to choose from and we want to make sure that guys are getting picked.
“Jai not playing this week, he’s been a massive part and he is a massive part of what we do. We want guys to come in and put pressure on others and when I say pressure, just to get everyone performing at their best and Tevita has got to do that himself.”