Returning Samoan World Cup star claims team didn’t “earn it” enough last year

The recent World Cup saw stars from all Super League sides and all nations feature with the shock package of the tournament being Samoa who became the first pacific-island nation to make the final.

One of their stars that didn’t get to contribute as much as he’d have liked was Tyrone May, who plays his rugby at Catalans Dragons, having joined the French outfit ahead of last season from NRL champions Penrith Panthers.

The versatile Samoan was a huge addition last year for Catalans but there were fears he would miss time at the start of the season following a horror injury in the opening fixture of the World Cup.

May suffered a dislocated hip but he’s intent on making the recovery process and missing out on a World Cup final worth it with a successful season in Super League.

At the time the NRL Physio, who has almost 100,000 followers on Instragam, explained the injury could see a five month recovery timeline, as reported here.

Speaking to the Sportsman Rugby League on their Youtube channel, May spoke about ambitions for the upcoming season.

“New season means new ambitions and goals for myself, coming into pre-season now so hopefully we can smack out some training and get to the real thing.

“We fell short last year, the year before we made it to the Grand Final and then last year we were looking to replicate that and fell short. We probably thought it was going to be given to us instead of going out there and earning it, and this year we’ll earn it a lot more.”

May is used to success having won the first of Penrith’s two consecutive Grand Final’s in the NRL, before making the switch, and he talked about what being a member of a top team means.

“We know teams are going to come going for us, when you play a top team then you try and make a statement so we know teams will be coming for us, but we also know who we are as a club and our identity and we want to stamp that a lot more this year.”