Waerea-Hargreaves said the Roosters backedcoach Trent Robinson's after he made an impassioned plea to rid the game of players milking penalties. The Roosters prop is also battling an ongoing biceps injury and played against the Dragons with a genuine chance of rupturing it, which would have sidelined him for an extended period. Waerea-Hargreaves revealed he told Aitken to "stop lying down and get up" after he had attracted a penalty having been hit by Dylan Napa.

"That's exactly what I said,"  Waerea-Hargreaves  said. "He got up about 10 seconds later with a smile on his face. We're not going to change the way we play. We are a side that doesn't lie down. We get up and play footy. There's been lots of talk about it in the last couple of weeks but as a player, I know we don't lie down. We continue to play footy. We are going to play the style of footy we play."

Back-rower Aidan Guerra said players taking a dive was a bad look for the game. "Obviously I am on the same side as Robbo," Guerra said. "It's something that doesn't look good. Everyone can see when someone is taking a dive. People are sitting there and you feel the penalty is coming, but you sort of know it's coming for the wrong reasons. That's not really the way you thought the sport was going,. But that's the way it is.  Different players have different agendas. We all want to win but some people think that taking that shortcut or taking that easy way out and taking a dive, is the better option than playing good footy. That's not the way we see it. We see it as if you're willing to work hard and do the hard yards, the football will come. We think that's a different mentality if you're taking a dive."

Waerea-Hargreaves  rushed his recovery to play against the Dragons. He was originally supposed to miss up to six weeks, but played despite the risk of further damage.

"Being the emotional game it was, you have different thoughts approaching the Anzac Day game," Waerea-Hargreaves  said. "I had positive thoughts all week. I walked into Robbo's office earlier in the week and told him I'm playing. He sort of said good luck and that I would have to talk to the medical staff. We pushed it four, five, six times a day.

"I asked a couple of times if there was a chance of me rupturing it. The big picture they said yes. I stayed confident as much as I could. Went out there and tried to do my part for the team. We've done a bit of work over the last 10 days and it's obviously improved. I'm attacking this game as I usually would. I don't think there is much risk in the pec any more."