Resilient Taukeiaho defies injury to star again

For the second straight week, Roosters prop Siosiua Taukeiaho has shrugged off a hamstring injury to dominate an opposing forward pack in the absence of key man Jared Waerea-Hargreaves.

Last week Taukeiaho scored a crucial try against Parramatta after Waerea-Hargreaves went off with a rib injury, having strained his hamstring in the warm-up.

Then in Thursday's 36-4 demolition of the Broncos he amassed more than 200 metres in a man-of-the-match performance to dominate Brisbane's vaunted pack.

His coach Trent Robinson had kept fans in the dark all week regarding Waerea-Hargreaves' availability, declaring after Wednesday's captain's run the Kiwi prop would be fine before scratching him in the 24-hour team list that night.

But Taukeiaho revealed after the game he had known all week he would be required to assume a leadership role in Waerea-Hargreaves' absence, and it's a role he performed in convincing fashion.

"It's always sad to see Jared go out but I knew from the start of the week that Jared wasn't playing this week so I just had to try and prepare myself mentally to lead from the front and I thought I did that pretty well," Taukeiaho told NRL.com.

"I did my hammy during warm-up last week against Parra so it was a bit of a 50-50 call but I guess I had to put the hammy behind and try and go out there and get the job done.

"It's not really [something you can usually play through] but I think it's a mental thing that I've always had, I got the hammy thing brushed to the side and just had to go out there and nail my role.

"I thought our forward pack went out there with the mentality to go out there and dominate them and we did that extremely well."

Incredibly Taukeiaho tweaked his hamstring yet again after resting it all week.

"I did my hammy my second carry [against Brisbane]," he said.

"I haven't trained all week, I was just trying to stay on top of it. We've got a long turnaround (of nine days until playing Cronulla next Saturday) so now I've just got to stay on top of it."

Taukeiaho's match-winning performance drew healthy praise from his coach.

"He's been doing it for a while," Robinson said.

"There's some sexier players out there that get some raps at different times and they deserve that but there's some guys there that have done this for a while and Siua is one of those guys.

"He's been pretty important. He almost didn't play last week. He came into the change room [after the warm up] and it was touch and go whether he was going to get on the field against Parramatta then the goes out and plays the game that he did against Parramatta, scored the try that got us that real gap then he goes out [Thursday], he didn't train all week then he goes out and performs again."