Dad’s a hard man; son has pedigree
By BOB FOX
Dad’s a hard man; son has pedigree
Taura Robati wonders now what’s next for his kids. He’s told them he’s going to help, now he’s got the time.
Having put son Pride Petterson- Robati on the next step of his future, he knows he must do the same for his other children. There’s Kellie, his stepson, then Danielle, Pride, Nimue, Valhalla and Rain.
For the last 10 years Tud Robati has coached his son in the skills he needs to play top level league, whether at Trentham Memorial Park or at home in the backyard with Tud’s own tackle bag, filled with road gravel.
As a five and six-year-old, even later until the tattered bag wore out, Pride hammered the bag. Sometimes it hammered back.
“He cried, once, when he hurt his shoulder,” Tud recalls. Little sympathy; “Nah, I got him mad and he just flew back into it.
“Even now, they don’t run straight at him.”
Tud’s muscles flex. He’s a hard man.
“Yep,” he says nodding his head.
“Yep.”
Tud himself played for Upper Hutt in the under-15s, then later with Marist-Northern and Petone. But he was already in trouble. The Mt Crawford prison team won their competition in 1993, and the Witako Pukekos also played well when he was in the teams.
Why Pride as a name?
“It’s a long story. My cellmate was a burner artist, on wood, and he had done one of a British bulldog, the symbol of the mob, which showed all the pugnacity, all the pride of a Winston Churchill. He had Bulldog written over the top, but it needed a name underneath. We sat in the cell and looked at it for a long time. Pride, I finally said, I’m proud to call him Pride.”
The artwork hangs on the lounge wall.
And Tud pledged to call his eldest won Pride, while daughter Valhalla picked up the Scandinavian influence of her mother, Petterson. Pride played his early league in the same team as older sister Danielle, who enjoyed the league, but not her default role as Pride’s alternate to the backyard tackle bag. It hurt.
As Pride rose through the grades, Tud took over as his coach, and he concedes he was tough on his son. “I do push him, I do. But Dads look for their mistakes, so they can be fixed. People who praise players never point out what he does wrong. “Dads look out for the little things that, when fixed, will make him a better player.
“But he doesn’t listen to me now,” he grins. “But he had better remember that if he gets up there – through the under-18s, 20s, the NRL to the Kiwis – I better hear my name.”
Pride is off to the Melbourne Storm on a six-year contract after first being noticed on a training camp as a 14-year-old. He’ll live with a family, work hard at school and on the training field, and hopefully work his way to the top. He certainly has the pedigree. Pride is the greatgrandson of 1936-37 Maori All Black lock Daniel Tuhoro, proud Ngati Porou who, with two brothers, played for the East Coast. Also from the Petterson side comes great-grandmother Grace Clark, a Christchurch 17-year-old sprinter who went home after training on the back of her boyfriend’s motorbike. They crashed, she broke her ankle, and never realised her dream of making the New Zealand team for the 1929 Empire Games.
“It’s up to him now,” says Tud. “He’s got the chance to fulfil his dream.” Dad’s dream includes one-day watching his son play his first game in the under-20s, the second level of the NRL.
Storm recruitment manager Darren Bell promised Tud they would fly him over for that, “but it would just be for the one day. Just one day.” There’s too much trouble in his past for longer.
Now he turns to Kellie, Danielle, Nimue, Valhalla and Rain, to help them achieve success in their lives. “It’s what I have to do,” Taura Robati says. “It’s a kind of redemption.”
Already in Melbourne Storm colours, Pride is with Dad, Taura and big sister Danielle at their Trentham home. Danielle, two years older, was the ‘alternate’ tackle bag for her little brother. It could hurt.