Fullback Antics
Warriors vs Dragons preview, Auckland FC in the Aussie Cup, Kiwis in the English Premier League, domestic cricket movers, and more
Scotty’s Word
NZ Warriors play against Dragons at Mt Smart on Friday night. They have had three consecutive losses against teams spread across the NRL ladder in Titans (17th), Dolphins (8th) and Bulldogs (3rd). They have also lost four of their last five games at Mt Smart and although Dragons are 11th, they have won their last two games.
NZW are 3-1 vs Dragons during the two Andys era with a win in their only game at Mt Smart...
In Sydney: 48-18 win
In Auckland: 18-6 win
In Sydney: 12-30 loss
In Sydney: 15-14 win
Roger Tuivasa-Sheck has another chance to be the best player on the field. Him and Erin Clark have been my favourite players for NZW this season, but Tuivasa-Sheck's recent form has made him the best player for NZW this season. I have been tracking his mahi closely this season because I reckon it's among his best years of NRL footy - easily his best tackling season and he is averaging 206m/game which is similar to his fullback antics.
To map this out further I have broken down his 200+ metre seasons by metres per receipt...
2025: 8.08m
2015: 7.28m
2019: 6.31m
2020: 6.23m
2021: 5.69m
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This feels like a crucial game for Tanah Boyd and one that may define his time at Mt Smart. Boyd responded to being dropped last round with two linebreaks, two try assists, five tackle breaks, one offload, 144 running metres and 432 kick metres in a NSW Cup win vs Bulldogs.
That was his first game with 100+ run metres and 400+ kick metres in reserve grade this season. It was also his first game with more than three tackle breaks and 20+ post contact metres. Boyd has 14 wins and no losses in NSW Cup this year with 18 try assists.
Given Boyd's strength is his kicking game and control as a pure halfback, I thought it was crazy to drop him for a rainy game vs Bulldogs. While I seem to have a higher opinion of Boyd than many, he still hasn't had a commanding performance aside from the win vs Tigers and now the NZW team needs their halfback to take this opportunity vs Dragons.
All four players on the bench vs Dragons are 23-years-old or younger. Samuel Healey is the oldest and I'm curious about his involvement with Wayde Egan returning then there are the three local juniors rolling through the forward pack. Demitric Vaimauga and Tanner Stowers-Smith are 21-years-old, Eddie Ieremia-Toeava is 20-years-old and they are yet to play the same game together.
The beauty of the NZW system is that they have all stacked up lots of footy to prepare for the NRL grind. Vaimauga has only played 20 games of NSW Cup but his 26 NRL games takes him beyond 40 games, while Stowers Smith has played 45 games of NSW Cup and Ieremia-Toeava has played 43 games of NSW Cup. All three have played 40+ games of NSW Cup or higher as youngsters.
We have lots more New Zealand sports thoughts for paid subscribers and our full newsletter is copied into Patreon for the whanau funding our mahi. I’ve got more notes about the NZ Warriors pipeline and Aotearoa rugby league updates from NRL, NRLW and beyond. I also put a cricketing spotlight on Georgia Plimmer and Eden Carson with White Ferns preparing for the ODI World Cup, plus is a quick round up of kiwi cricketers like Tom Bruce who are representing other nations.
Three domestic cricket zones I'm pondering...
Auckland churn
Auckland have lots of churn in their contract groups with at least nine newly contracted players across both teams. This could be good considering that most of the new players (men and women) are being promoted from within their system.
Dale Phillips came through Auckland before moving to Otago and now he returns with Rohit Gulati the only player new to the contract tier who has moved to Auckland (from ND). Talia Hurley played for CD a few years ago before moving to the Auckland club circuit and this means that most of the newly contracted Auckland players have been promoted from within their system.
Louis Delport and Saachi Shahri have retired, taking two experienced troopers out of both Auckland teams. Will O'Donnell and Quinn Sunde are part of the churn as they don't have contracts. Players can play without contracts but it is funky how both O'Donnell brothers are no longer contracted to Auckland with Rob moving to ND ahead of last season and Will not contracted anywhere.
Otago have coaches and snap up Aucklanders
Otago have locked in coaches! Josh Tasman-Jones is the men's coach and Gareth Davies is the women's coach. Davies is the funky one here as he has good pedigree in England and takes over from Craig Cumming who helped make Otago Sparks a force in domestic cricket. How Davies goes about maintaining Sparks excellence will be fascinating, while Tasman-Jones takes over from Ashley Noffke and I’m curious how the Volts settle after a crazy few years with their head coaches.
They also picked up another Auckland youngster with Anika Todd joining brother Jamal in Otago, as well as Anna Browning who moved south prior to last season. Most of these seem related to university with the lure of Sparks excellence adding to the move from Browning and Todd, two young wahine who were among/the best young players in Auckland prior to their departures.
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Change of scenery
Fresh scenery could help Kate Chandler, Molly Loe and Troy Johnson. There are other players who have made moves but these three stand out as players who could benefit from changes. Chandler was the most surprising mover as she was a bit of a phenom at Wellington and is still only 18yrs old. Now she has a better opportunity for game time as a spinning all-rounder with Canterbury.
Loe moves from Otago to Canterbury. She is 22yrs and was always solid without dominating for Otago, but she has plenty of potential to settle into a regular 1st 11 role as a seamer who can bat a bit. Missy Banks was fantastic with bat and ball last season for Canterbury so I'm looking forward to the Banks/Loe combo this summer.
Johnson was a 1st 11 player for Wellington but he dipped out of that mix last season and has moved to Otago where he can demand all-format selection. Averaging 30+ in First-Class and List-A batting, Johnson has also played 20+ games in all three formats since debuting in 2019 and has 50+ scores in all three formats with centuries in FC and LA. Johnson has already shown his potential and now he has a chance to be a 1st 11 Volt.
Musical jam…
Wildcard’s Notebook
Auckland FC are through to the quarter-finals of the Australia Cup after a comfortable win against South Melbourne last night. This keeps alive the prospect of a Kiwi Derby in the semis, which will happen should AFC progress past Sydney FC next round and the Wellington Phoenix past Heidelberg (who turned over Western Sydney Wanderers the other night). The Nix have scraped through their two games (with a shootout win against Perth and a last-gasp goal vs Nunawading), but Auckland FC have been typically commanding with victorious scorelines of 4-0 (Gold Coast Knights) and 3-0 (South Melbourne). Seven goals scored and none conceded. No stress whatsoever.
Jesse Randall scored twice against South Melbourne. He’s getting lots of striker minutes as a benefit of AFC not yet having signed their last import and is making it count – that’s three goals in 161 mins across these two cup games. Steve Corica has more or less picked his best team for both outings yet standard preseason niggles have allowed for some shake-ups. They used the illustrious Sakai-Hall-Pijnaker-FDV back four in the first match but a minor injury for Pijnaker this time saw Sakai slide centrally and Callan Elliot started out wide. Also, Louis Verstraete hasn’t featured to date.
Auckland haven’t signed another CB since Tommy Smith left... but it sounds like they rate reserves dude Semi Nabenu very highly and this South Melbourne game came with the fascinating inclusion of Luka Vicelich on the bench (apparently Nabenu was missing with a concussion for this game). In fact, the 17yo was subbed on for the last quarter of an hour for his first team debut. Vicelich (son of Ivan) was the youngest player signed in AFC’s initial reserves intake. They’ve since added a couple of younger lads but Vicelich remains one of their freshest talents and it was only in the last few weeks that he started getting minutes for the ressies. He made one sub appearance across their first 12 games. Since then he’s had a run of three sub cameos leading into his first Northern League start against Eastern Suburbs on 12 July almost exactly one month ago. AFC won that game and then they won the next two that he started as well.
With an impact as glowing as that, I had already suspected that he may have travelled to Victoria when he wasn’t included last weekend in the Reserves team that drew with Auckland City. The same Auckland City whose academy he came through and where his dad is the assistant coach. Heck of a rapid rise for LV, especially at a club like Auckland who don’t rotate that much so the young dudes have really gotta earn it.
The other debutant in this game was new addition Lachlan Brook who played on the wing, replacing Marlee Francois. Pretty sure Brook will claim a starting spot in due course. It was funky to see that he played right wing with Logan Rogerson switching to the left considering that Rogerson played exclusively on the right last season. Brook’s very left-footed and Rogerson is very right-footed.
And an additional shout out to Cam Howieson who’s been starting ahead of Jake Brimmer in midfield in these games. Howieson played ninety minutes against South Melbourne – just the second time he’s logged a full game for the Black (and Blue) Knights. On a similar note, Michael Woud still has a perfect clean sheet record after his first two appearances.
The English Premier League season kicks off this weekend and, as things stand, Alex Paulsen (Bournemouth) and Marko Stamenic (Nottingham Forest) still have not been loaned out. You’d have to imagine that still happens soon enough but for now they remain with those Prem clubs and would hypothetically be available in week one. For what it’s worth, both of them have had their club website profiles updated with media day pics of them in the new kits.
Paulsen is the third choice keeper at Bournemouth. They’ve signed Djordje Petrovic for big money to be the new number one and, after a few departures, it seems that Will Dennis will be number two. Dennis is 25yo and signed a contract extension back in February. He spent the 2023-24 season on loan with Kilmarnock and then hung around with the Cherries for all of last term without ever playing. That probably puts him two years ahead of Paulsen in his development given that AP is still awaiting that first taste of European footy – he’d have to be training the house down to have jumped the queue. But even hanging around as third choice would have massive benefits.
Stamenic has been in and out of the picture during Nottm Forest’s preseason. He featured in a few friendlies at the start but didn’t make the cut for their training camp in Portugal. However, he’s since returned to the fold and got minutes in both of their last two friendlies. Chris Wood assures us that he’s settled in smoothly...
“He's fitted in very well. He's brought into the dressing room really well, and the boys are talking to him, which is great. The boys are seeing his quality, and he shows that he's got a bit, which could help him to play in the Premier League one day, definitely. He's been a bit-part player as the preseason games have gone on. He's been able to get some minutes, but not as much as I'm sure he would like. But that's football and that's preseason for you. We're gearing up for a Premier League season. He's in and around it. He's training every day with us. He was in the squad last Saturday when we played the Saudi team. So he's there or thereabouts, ready to take on the chance if given an opportunity.”
There are rumours of him maybe joining Swansea in the second tier. There was also yarn that he would be rejoining Olympiacos which made no sense to anyone and any/all Greek sources shot that one down immediately. Seems they were right because if that was going to happen then it would have happened now.
The transfer window lasts until the end of the month – although Paulsen being a goalkeeper gives him some wiggle room beyond that in the form of emergency loans. Could be that their clubs see them as useful fringe players to keep around. Could be that they see them as future prospects and want to give them as much integration as possible before sending them out. Could be that they’re still waiting for ideal loan options to arise. Could be that they plan on waiting until January to send them out. Could be that they’re waiting until other transfers get done before they can spare them. Time will tell.
Aotearoa Domestic Football Roundup – August 11
New Zealanders in the English Premier League
Chris Wood – 263 games | 89 goals (West Brom, Leicester City, Burnley, Newcastle Utd, Nottm Forest)
Ryan Nelsen – 198 games | 9 goals (Blackburn Rovers, Tottenham, QPR)
Winston Reid – 166 games | 6 goals (West Ham)
Simon Elliott – 12 games | 0 goals (Fulham)
Danny Hay – 4 games | 0 goals (Leeds)
Lee Norfolk – 3 games | 0 goals (Ipswich Town)
Thanks to the Nelsen-Wood-Reid triumvirate, we’re about to enter the 22nd consecutive Premier League season with kiwi involvement... albeit we haven’t had a debut since Winston Reid in 2010-11 (Chris Wood actually debuted before Reid as a 17yo for WBA). We’ve never had more than two kiwis playing in a single season. There was once a 15-year drought for kiwis in the Champions League too and Marko Stamenic broke that a couple seasons ago. Perhaps he’ll break the Prem drought too.
And there’s plenty more to enjoy in the Championship where Tyler Bindon, Libby Cacace, and Max Crocombe have all recently made transfers, while the likes of Henry Gray, Joe Wallis, and Marley Leuluai are doing their thing at U21s level... but only our paid subscribers get to read that breakdown. That’s how we say thanks to the generous folks who allow us to get paid for what we do.
It would appear that NZ Football are planning on changing the National League structure again. There’s a summit later this month when decisions will start being made. They want to bring it back around so that the National League runs through the winter as a proper league season – with promotion and relegation – rather than as the Champions League style end-season comp that we’ve had for the last few years. In other words, Wellington Olympic would no longer play Central League because the National League would now exist within the same structure one level above. The current proposals are for a 12-team men’s league and a 10-team women’s league that’d be double round robin and may or may not include playoffs at the end of it (hopefully not). It’s possible they might expand the blokes to 14 teams.
They’re also proposing to loosen the foreign player restrictions from citizens to permanent residents (good) and to axe the men’s U20s minutes rule (also good). Promotion would involve playoffs between the three regional champs at the conclusion of those seasons. They might also have an additional promotion playoff for the men’s comp between the team that finishes second to last in the Nats and the runners-up in the promotion playoffs. There would be club licensing involved too, so it’s not as simple as highest qualifiers next year progress.
Any changes would come into effect in 2027. It seems to me that the biggest risks are the added costs of having so much travel throughout the season and then also the threat of the league becoming even more Auckland/Wellington/Christchurch centric than it already is. They’d keep the same ratios of qualifiers for year one but all it would take is a couple of years of Southern League teams being relegated and Auckland-based clubs winning promotion to skew the balance massively. And you kinda have to worry whether the regional leagues without their Natty qualifiers would foster a strong enough standard to challenge the top tier after promotion. Then again, that’s no different to most competitions around the world. And if the emphasis is on the competition, on letting the best of the best duel it out, and the best teams happen to be from those areas… then so be it.
It’s not like good things aren’t happening in other regions. Dunedin City Royals have upset the Christchurch dominance by winning the Women’s South Island League. Nelson Suburbs blokes are into the Chatham Cup semis. Tauranga City will probably miss the Men’s National League cut but earlier in the season they were threatening a title challenge. Melville United are in the mix to have both their men’s and women’s teams promoted to the top Northern divisions. You can read the Feedback & Proposal Paper here via Friends of Football.
New Zealand has pretty comfortably won the Oceania U16s Women’s Championships. The kiwi girls went 5/5 winning 4-0 vs Tonga, 5-0 vs Solomon Islands, and 6-0 vs American Samoa in the group stage and then beating New Caledonia 4-2 in the semis and Samoa 3-0 in the final. They had 10 different goal scorers with Isla Robson (6), Mia Humphrey (4), and Amelia Hitchcock (3) leading the way. Everyone in the squad made at least two starts and nobody started all five. Lexi Hedington played the most minutes (379) followed by Miche Clote (360), Amelia Hitchcock (332), Micaela Besley (327), and Eden Chaytor (303). Here’s the breakdown...
Musical Jam...
