Rugby league: Doncaster star Pauli Pauli ready for reunion with Salford

The Australian-born prop/second-rower, who is of Samoan descent, spent two seasons at the former Super League club during which time he played for them in the 2020 Challenge Cup final.

Pauli enjoyed spells in the Australian NRL with Parramatta and Newcastle Knights, before flying to England to link up with Wakefield Trinity. He also spent two years at York City Knights after leaving Salford before joining the Dons ahead of the 2024 season. The personable 31-year-old quickly has become a huge favourite with Dons’ fans due to his block-busting runs and neat off-loads and is a key element in the Doncaster pack.

The Dons will be looking to get back to winning ways following three consecutive defeats which have seen them drop from second to sixth at the halfway point of the season, against a side which is still rebuilding after almost going out of existence during the close season due to a severe cash crisis,

“Speaking personally, I don’t care where we are in the table at this moment in time,” said Pauli. “It’s a long season and the plan has always been to keep building towards the end-of-season play-offs.

“London Broncos are a very good team and they look the side to beat. We lost heavily down there recently in the 1895 Cup quarter-final, but we run them very close when we played them at home in the league earlier in the season.

“As I say, they are a very good side but we feel that we can beat anyone in the Championship on our day and if we can go down there and beat them in the return next month that would give us a huge boost for the rest of the season.

“We didn’t do ourselves justice in our last game at home to Barrow and although it was our second game in four days – and they hadn’t played on the weekend - I don’t think you can blame it all on that.

“Having lost our last three league games we obviously haven’t been getting everything right in recent weeks but we’ve been working hard on doing that going forward.

“We will have had over a fortnight off since we last played and the break probably came at the right time for us and hopefully we’ll be fired up for the Salford game, which is the first in a run of away games before we play Batley at home in last July.”

Having twice beaten Salford easily at home in both the league and the 1895 Cup this season, the Dons will be chasing a hat-trick of wins over the Manchester club who have won their last two games – a sequence which included a huge victory over North Wales Crusaders on Sunday.

But with a new head coach at the helm and several new faces – including former Super League back Kieran Dixon – having joined the club recently - Pauli knows it will be a tougher game than the previous two.

“I still fancy our chances and hope to play my part,” he said. “I missed a few games with a knee problem earlier in the season and lost a bit of match-fitness but I’ve been working on that over the last couple of weeks. I just want to keep myself fit for the rest of the season and play my part in helping the team to do well.

“The coaching staff have had me playing in short bursts in recent games and I’m happy to play that way if they feel that benefits the team.”