Leigh Leopards chief tips forward to ‘take Super League by storm’ in 2025

Leigh Leopards’ head of rugby Chris Chester is tipping Alec Tuitavake to ‘take Super League by storm’ in 2025.

Tuitavake signed a two-year deal with the Leopards last month, adding size and strength to Adrian Lam’s front-row options. The 23-year-old forward has never played first grade with his experience being limited to the New South Wales Cup so far, after spells with Blacktown Workers Sea Eagles and St George Illawarra Dragons.

However, he’s very highly rated and he’s expected to be a key member of Lam’s pack this season after linking up with his new teammates. Chester believes Tuitavake can be a direct replacement for Tom Amone at the Leigh Sports Village, with the prop returning to the NRL with Canterbury Bulldogs in the off-season following three years with the Leopards.

And, after doing his homework and watching him in training at the club, he’s confident that Tuitavake has what it takes to star in Super League.

“He’s probably unknown to a lot people but if you watch a lot of the New South Wales Cup or Queensland Cup and my contacts that I speak to over in Australia, some ex-players, some ex-players that used to coach, some ex-coaches that I was coached by, I do my homework on a lot of these guys and Alec’s name cropped up quite regular,” Chester told Serious About RL when asked about the former New South Wales under-18s representative.

“Having watched him and watched some clips on him, I watched some games in depth, he was probably just exactly what we needed. We expect him to be that Tom Amone for us in 2025, he has good leg speed, he’s got good size to him a good engine and he’s another guy that I’m pretty sure will take Super League by storm.”

Tuitavake joins with his peak years still someway ahead of him and that’s been a common recruitment theme for the Leopards ahead of the new season. David Armstrong, AJ Towse, Tesi Niu, Ryan Brown, Brad Martin and Will Brough are all aged 23 or under, with Isaac Liu being the only addition made over the age of 25.

“When I look at the players we’ve signed, we’ve got Davy at 23, I think Tesi is 23, Alec is 23 as well,” Chester continued. “We want to see how Alec goes and so far, so good. He’s been very, very good outside on the field, strong in the gym and just a really good, genuine guy. I think he’ll be a real success in ’25 this year.”