NRL.com: NRLW Rookie Watch - Tayla Predebon

Ahead of the rescheduled NRL Telstra Women's Premiership, NRL.com profiles the next crop of talent ready to make their mark in 2022.

Rookie snapshot

• Name: Tayla Predebon
• Age: 21
• NRLW club: Roosters
• Position: Prop

Roosters prop Tayla Predebon isn't afraid to tell it like it is.

Her own harshest critic, the Gloucester product was hard on herself after what she thought was a bad performance in a club game last year when Roosters coach John Strange stepped in.

Strange, who coached Predebon in the Central Coast side, was about to deliver some news.

"I had the shits about my performance that day but he thought quite the opposite," Predebon said.

The pair's thought processes couldn't have been more different with Strange's next line of discussion shocking the 21-year-old forward.

"He simplified my performance for me and then started saying he was thinking about me for the NRLW and I couldn't believe it," she continued.

"I was completely blindsided by it and had no idea I was anywhere near it.

"He called me a few weeks later to have an official chat but at the time he needed to really get in my head because I was quite angry with how I went."

Predebon has taken everything in her stride since the conversations and officially signed her first NRLW contract last July before the COVID-19 pandemic postponed the competition.

Among 10 Central Coast Roosters players in the Sydney Roosters' squad, the fitness instructor began playing rugby league in high school as a way of gaining a day off.

"We had a gala day and because Gloucester is such a small town we played for a bit of fun, I absolutely loved it from there," she said.

"I felt like I was prepared for the contact side of it given I grew up with two brothers."

A rugged no-nonsense forward, Predebon has begun to adapt to the impact a new generation prop can have in the game. 

She's found it tougher as she's moved through the ranks in recent years and expects it to go to another level in the NRLW.

"That's probably where I succeeded early on because I'd run through and over people, so it's exciting to learn all the techniques of the game," she said.

"I was 17 when I started in the front row playing in the HNWP, playing against big, grown ladies but I've never been scared of the size.

"The bigger they are, the harder they fall. I love that aspect of the game."

As a fresh face coming into the competition, Predebon wants to take her opportunities and repay the Roosters, who have lost plenty of experience in the engine room for 2022.

"The goal is to debut but I just want to at a minimum take away all the experience of training and being in that environment," Predebon said.

"They have so much experience and you learn most when you're around them. It's the perfect time to begin playing so I want to keep growing."