Wests Tigers recruit Joey Leilua has revealed he decided to leave Canberra due to a falling out with Raiders coach Ricky Stuart last year.

The Sydney Morning Herald spoke to Leilua after his first training session at Concord on Tuesday, and the barnstorming centre opened up on his relationship with Stuart and how far it deteriorated.

It was believed he was keen to leave the nation’s capital after last year’s grand finalists signed fellow right centre Curtis Scott from Melbourne, and Leilua may have been pushed out of the side.

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Round 20

But even after Scott was arrested in Sydney last weekend and his future at the club was thrown under a cloud, Leilua said he was never interested in backflipping on the Tigers.

It all began last year when Leilua was returning from a neck injury, and made himself available for a Round 21 game against the Roosters.

“Something happened last year between me and Sticky (Stuart) and I wasn’t happy,” Leilua told the Herald.

“I was coming back from my neck (surgery) and he told me I’d be back for the Roosters. I would have been up against Latrell (Mitchell), I worked my arse off and got mentally prepared.

“Then they went over to New Zealand the week before and had a massive win, he came back and said I wasn’t good enough to play.

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“I said to him, ‘how can you say that when you told me to get ready?’.

“I asked him if he thought I wasn’t good enough for the team, and he said, ‘you’re not good enough for this team’.

“From that moment I was off him. We lost to the Roosters, he called me up the next week and we won.

“I was still mad. I wasn’t happy with him. I respect Ricky as a coach and what he has done for me, but I wasn’t happy.”

Leilua said he had another falling out with Stuart in pre-season, when he was left behind in Canberra for being overweight.

The rest of the top 30 squad travelled to the Sunshine Coast for a training camp.