{"id":55142,"date":"2021-04-07T07:01:12","date_gmt":"2021-04-07T07:01:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=55142"},"modified":"2021-04-07T14:58:02","modified_gmt":"2021-04-07T14:58:02","slug":"tommys-savage-initiation-ritual-for-rookie-half","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/?p=55142","title":{"rendered":"Tommy's savage initiation ritual for rookie half"},"content":{"rendered":"

Everyone in league has their favourite Tom Raudonikis<\/a> story – and a player who followed him into the famous Magpies number seven jumper, Josh White, is no exception.<\/p>\n

"Tommy took over as coach of Wests in 1995 and rang me and said he wants to meet me," White recalled.<\/p>\n

MORE: <\/strong>Tommy's brutal Joey spray after Cattledog<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

"He was a boyhood hero so I wasn't about to say no – I drove to his house in Campbelltown and he answered the door in a yellow sarong with no shirt on drinking a long neck.<\/p>\n

\"Tommy<\/p>\n

"He let me in and told me how he wanted me to terrorise every halfback I played and by the end of our talk I was ready to play. I think I lost some friendships following Tommy's instructions but he was the coach.<\/p>\n

"After a couple of beers he said we should go down the club and meet some supporters which I was only too happy to do. We went drink for drink all afternoon and when we had enough Tommy walked me to my car to drive home.<\/p>\n

MORE: <\/strong>How Footy Show revealed Tommy's true home<\/strong><\/a><\/strong><\/p>\n

"I was thinking 'I can't even walk so how am I going to drive?' but Tommy opened the car door and helped me in. As I completed a u-turn Tommy was standing in the middle of the road waving 'bye bye'.<\/p>\n

"I realised I couldn't see straight so I pulled over and slept in my car for six hours before I drove home. Tommy said to me at training the following week, 'Gee, I'm glad you got home OK, I was a bit worried for you driving off'."<\/p>\n

Raudonikis insisted that White took a 'take no prisoners' approach on the field.<\/p>\n

\"NRL<\/p>\n

"He was great for me, but he insisted that I sledge every halfback I played against\u2026 he made it clear that if I didn't, he would drag me off and that caused me plenty of grief," White said.<\/p>\n

"I remember when we played the Warriors\u2026 Greg Alexander was a boyhood hero and I felt terrible about it, but I gave him a dreadful sledging. I hope 'Brandy' reads this and understands, I really didn't mean it, mate," he added with a laugh.<\/p>\n

For a daily dose of the best of the breaking news and exclusive content from Wide World of Sports, subscribe to our newsletter by<\/strong><\/em> clicking here!<\/strong><\/em><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Everyone in league has their favourite Tom Raudonikis story – and a player who followed him into the famous Magpies number seven jumper, Josh White, […]<\/a><\/p>\n<\/div>","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[1],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55142"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=55142"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55142\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":55144,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/55142\/revisions\/55144"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=55142"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=55142"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/sportinfo.pro\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=55142"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}