Aotearoa Warriors Diary: Pre-Season Challenge Squad vs Tigers
New Zealand Warriors have named their first squad of 2024 and there are a few surprise inclusions sprinkled into an incredibly funky group of youngsters. NZW will face Tigers in Christchurch on Sunday afternoon and this will be an intriguing way to start the season as last year's consistently hearty crowds across Aotearoa began with a Pre-Season Challenge game in Christchurch where 12,000 Cantabs showed up to watch NZW face Storm.
Tuck this away because this tells the tale of rugby league in Aotearoa. Not only has NZW made a formal link with Christchurch to play more games in the South Island, they head to Christchurch with Halswell junior Tanner Stowers-Smith in the squad to face Tigers and have a bunch of South Island juniors playing Under 17 and Under 19s already this year.
Aotearoa has far too much rugby league talent for NZW so there is also a growing list of Kiwi-NRL juniors from the South Island working through NRL pipelines to start 2024. The best pocket for rugby league growth right now is the South Island and Christchurch will probably be buzzing for what is effectively a warm up game.
The NZW squad lays out the second tier of the their wider NRL mixer. Roger Tuivasa-Sheck is a notable inclusion at centre as he returns to rugby league and Jackson Ford is the other top-17 NRL lad named. Here are some key wrinkles...
Ali Leiataua is the funkiest back in the squad, named to start at centre. Leiataua's NRL opportunities could depend on his ability to play wing and centre, or as was the case in NSW Cup last year - any backline position. This will ensure that Leiataua is always in the mix to step in for an NRL game or two, especially as Tuivasa-Sheck and Rocco Berry seem like the best starting centre duo. All the buzz will be about Tuivasa-Sheck, but watch out for Leiataua.
Three Australian halves are named with Luke Metcalf at starting halfback, while the versatile Ben Farr is joined by Luke Hanson. When NZW released Ronald Volkman this yarn highlighted how they had picked up Hanson from Panthers where he played U19 then U21s last year. Hanson is the halves prospect to take note of and no one should be worried about NZW halves depth as the SG Ball team has young Aussie Jesse Soric and Wellington's Maui Winitana-Patelesio showcasing their ability.
Tracking match ups will be impossible and rotations won't matter in this PSC game. Generally though, a cluster of young and hostile young forwards are named for NZW while the Tigers forward pack skews towards their top-tier NRL blokes. The most encouraging thing about the young NZW forwards last year in limited NRL doses and across NSW Cup where the often dominated fringe-NRL forwards was brutal physicality.
Folks will look at the teams and assume the Tigers forwards are better, yet last year's warm upper vs Tigers saw Zyon Maiu'u and Jacob Laban shine against the same opponent. They are back for this game along with Stowers-Smith, Eddie Ieremia and Leka Halasima. Don't put a ceiling on these lads and this game could set the tone for what might be the best crop of young forwards in the NRL.
Two lads have returned to the NZW system in Toni Tupouniua and Quinnlan Tupou. Tupouniua is a Marist junior who played junior footy for NZW, then he moved to Australia after the 2019 Jersey Flegg season before rolling through a few reserve grade teams. Tupouniua can cover edge and middle forward, perhaps settling as a consistent edge forward for the NSW Cup crew.
Tupou's inclusion is perhaps the funkiest wrinkle of the whole squad as he was in the Warriors Academy back in 2018 as an Manurewa and Otahuhu junior. Tupou made the NZRL Under 16 Residents team and was saluted as an NZW academy player by earning the 'passionate' award in back to back years (2017 and 2018 - Leiataua won the 'selfless' award in 2018). That seems trivial, but Tupou clearly earned mana with NZW before moving from Botany Downs Secondary College to St Peter's Cambridge where he continued playing 1st 15.
Tupou made the Chiefs U18 team and then moved into the Chiefs U20 team before switching to Silverdale rugby last year. Now Tupou has swung back around to NZW and this not only continues the immense trend of Kiwi-NRL juniors play 1st 15, or the trend of NRL teams picking up players after playing Super Rugby U20s (Tavita Henare-Schuster with Roosters); it also continues the trend of nifty recruitment from NZW.
Last summer Kalani Going was brought into the NZW system from Northland rugby union and Paul Roache linked up with NZW from rugby union in Auckland. Both left Aotearoa to join the Raiders Kiwi-NRL system and returned to Aotearoa where they settled back into rugby union. NZW offered them an opportunity in rugby league and both are named in this squad to face Tigers.
Like Going and Roache, Tupou played both codes at a fairly high level. Unlike Going and Roache, Tupou stayed in Aotearoa throughout that journey and despite most of the junior staff changing since 2018, NZW didn't forget about Tupou's talents. Tupou appears to have played midfield in rugby union and that means he could play any position in league; Leiataua played midfield in 1st 15 and he's a league centre, Leo Thompson played midfield in 1st 15 and he is a league prop.
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