Running Sensation
Phenom stuff from Pia Vlok & Sam Ruthe, Super Smash finals, Blackcaps in India, Luke Hanson at the Warriors, Milly Clegg, and more
Scotty’s Word
Blackcaps continue their warm up phase for the T20 World Cup and I’ve got a few nuggets below, with more beyond the paywall...
16 players were used in the series vs India. That’s almost hitting the 20 player mark that I highlighted for each format last year and this aligns with those warm up vibes.
Finn Allen played the fifth game and hit 80 runs @ 210sr. He and Tim Seifert are the best opening combo, with Seifert playing as the wicket-keeper. Here’s their round up...
Seifert scored 103 runs @ 25.7avg/163sr in four games vs India.
BBL
Finn Allen: 466 runs @ 42.3avg/184sr
Tim Seifert: 285 runs @ 28.5avg/148sr
T20Is since start of 2025
Finn Allen: 224 runs @ 44.8avg/211sr
Tim Seifert: 662 runs @ 44.1avg/164sr
T20I careers
Finn Allen: 26.25avg/165sr
Tim Seifert: 29.59avg/143sr
T20 careers
Finn Allen: 30avg/175sr
Tim Seifert: 28.57avg/135sr
What about Devon Conway? He has strike-rates below 130 in both T20 career zones, is the only Blackcaps top-order batter below 140sr since the start of 2025, and isn’t as good a wicket-keeper as Seifert.
I’m still amazed by Jacob Duffy. He has been Aotearoa’s best all format bowler over the past 12 months and I was curious how that would look in a T20I series vs India, in India. Duffy was the leading wicket-taker for Blackcaps, the only bowler who had more than one game and conceded less than 11rpo.
Duffy’s T20I workload suggests he is loved by Blackcaps decision makers as well…
vs India: 17.4ov, 6w @ 31.5avg/10.6rpo
Most overs and wickets for NZ
2025 onwards: 88.2ov, 41w @ 17.4avg/8.1rpo
Most overs and wickets, second lowest average and lowest economy rate for Blackcaps with 10+ wickets
Duffy is also the leading wicket-taker for Blackcaps in T20Is since the start of 2024. He is now behind Lockie Ferguson for the lowest Blackcaps T20I bowling averages (20+ wickets) and they are the only seamers below 20avg. The fact that Duffy’s mahi is similar to Ferguson’s with the exact same strike-rate tells you all you need to know about Duffy’s excellence...
Lockie Ferguson: 66w @ 17.1avg/7.18rpo/14.2sr
Jacob Duffy: 59w @ 18.52avg/7.78rpo/14.2sr
Two things for the losing teams...
Prior to Jess Kerr’s legendary mahi to win the Grand Final, I was pondering a fabulous performance from Molly Penfold. She finished with 2w @ 3.5rpo in a game where every other bowler conceded more than 5rpo and that included a couple overs in the middle of the innings where Penfold took 2 wickets for a single run.
It took a crazy knock from Kerr to bump Penfold out of her match winning slot but the hostile seamer had her best Super Smash campaign...
2021/22: 7w @ 30.2avg/6.8rpo
2022/23: 4w @ 43.5avg/6.6rpo
2023/24: 5w @ 31.8avg/7.2rpo
2024/25: 6w @ 41.3avg/8rpo
2025/26: 17w @ 12.8avg/6.6rpo
Bree Illing’s 1w @ 5.5rpo made her and Penfold the only bowlers below 6rpo in this game. The have formed a brutal seam combo and along with Rosemary Mair, there is an exciting seam unit building for White Ferns as these three are probably the fastest bowlers in Aotearoa not named Lea Tahuhu.
My favourite thing about the Canterbury blokes was Lachlan Harper who, like Wellington duo Samuel Morgan and Oscar Jackson, performed well in Super Smash having not played any other domestic cricket. Harper finished with 86 runs @ 21.5avg/143sr and 8w @ 26.6avg/8.8rpo, hitting more sixes than fours (7/4). He was tied third for most Canterbury wickets.
This is a lovely display of depth as there are youngsters like Xavier Bell who enter domestic cricket with hype, while others like Jackson have worked through the NZC levels for folks to know a bit about them. Harper popped out of nowhere for those not inside the Canterbury system and looked comfy at this level. Plus he’s in his mid-20s so he is a bit older.
We have consistently seen players of all ages improve in the Blackcaps pipeline and we have seen players from all sorts of backgrounds settle in domestic cricket quickly. Harper is the latest example and I’m curious how he builds on this in the other formats as the summer continues.
A Casual's Guide To New Zealand Warriors Optimism For The 2026 NRL Season
10 Funky Kiwi-NRL Juniors In Australia For 2026
Luke Hanson is a fascinating player for NZ Warriors this season.
He has had two years at Mt Smart and played more NSW Cup games than U21s...
2024: 18 in NSW Cup | 6 in U21s
2025: 17 in NSW Cup | 5 in U21s
Before coming to NZW, Hanson played 10 games of U19s and 11 games of U21s in 2023 for Panthers. Hanson is clearly talented if he’s always playing up age brackets as a smaller half, then sprinkle in his starting halves role for the NSW Cup/State Championship double for NZW last year.
Hanson has four NRL tier halves ahead of him and three frothing young Aussie halves behind him in Jett Cleary, Jye Linnane and Jack Thompson. That smells like a recipe for Hanson being the first of these lads to leave Mt Smart but Andrew McFadden and NZW clearly like him, while Hanson clearly likes being a Warrior.
Though mainly a six, Hanson is most similar to Luke Metcalf with speed and instincts being his strengths. He seems to be a good kicker but Hanson hasn’t been tasked with those duties much in NSW Cup, mainly because he has been playing alongside an NRL half for most of those games. Last year it was primarily a Hanson and Tanah Boyd combo, so Hanson was never going to do much kicking there. Hence his kicking stats decreased… but more importantly his running, play-making, and tackling improved - as they should in his second year.
2024: 5 tries, 11 try assists, 4 offloads, 66m/game, 90.4% tackling, 130.1 kick metres/game
2025: 7 tries, 18 try assists, 6 offloads, 81m/game, 96.7% tackling, 33.5 kick metres/game
Hanson has won 25 of his 35 NSW Cup games, while being U21. He will need the stars to align for a debut this year but he is on track to be the next half to debut for NZW, especially as I’m confident they will slowly brew Jett Cleary to chill the hype. Someone else like Linnane has had multiple major knee injuries so they won’t be rushing him either.
Hanson is a starting half in my NSW Cup team that I’ve got deeper below for paid subscribers and the Patreon whanau.
Musical jam…
Nick’s Notebook
The Wellington Phoenix Women are one of the hottest tickets in town right now. Remember when they couldn’t score goals away from home? Well, they went to Newcastle and were 4-0 up after 25 minutes last night, ultimately winning 5-1 for their biggest ever away victory (they’d had three 3-0’s in the past), also tying a club record of three consecutive wins overall.
After only scoring three goals in their first five games, the WahiNix have scored 23 goals in the seven games since (scoring in all of those games with at least two goals in all but one of them – that one being the only defeat in that stretch). They’re up to second on the ladder, a mere two points behind Melbourne City after that lot lost against Adelaide United this week (a team that the Nix beat 3-1 last round). Wellington have conceded the fewest goals and scored the most across the ALW.
And it doesn’t feel accidental or fortuitous. Under Bev Priestman they look confident and determined, a team built upon superb defence and with several in-form outlets in attack. They’ve lost four players for the season (three ACLs and a pregnancy) and haven’t even flinched – these are characteristics that go beyond finals hopefuls and towards title contenders. Real deal winning football. I’ve got an article in the works about that transformation so I won’t retread the territory. Nah, it’s Pia Vlok that I wanna talk about here.
Pia Vlok scored a hat-trick in that win over Newcastle – the first ever three-bagger for the Phoenix in the ALW and the second-youngest hatty scorer in A-League Women’s history. You can tell the people who don’t read The Niche Cache by who seems to be learning her name now versus who already understood that she’s been a phenom since she was 15 years old playing for Auckland United in the National League.
Nothing about what she’s doing for the Nix has surprised me except for how quickly it’s all happening. Even other players who I’ve had similar raps on – Milly Clegg, Ruby Nathan, Helena Errington, Zoe Benson, Ela Jerez – have all needed time to settle at the professional level (and arguably Clegg is the only one of them who has already done so). Yet here’s Vlok orchestrating victories for the Nix, doing things that are hugely impressive regardless of age. The fact that she’s 17yo is just a happy bonus. For example, all three of her hat-trick goals were scored from outside the penalty area. How often do you ever see that happen under any circumstance? Looks at this shot map...
Eight shots from outside the area. Four goals. One shot off the woodwork.
14 shots overall. Five goals. Two shots off the woodwork.
Five goals from 1.25 xG (assuming Fotmob’s numbers are accurate... which they probably are, since outside-the-box shots have very low xG).
Nine shots with her right foot (three goals), five shots with her left (two goals).
The placement is remarkable too. They’ve all been bottom corner finishes... except for the one where she chipped the keeper from way out on the left for the clincher against Canberra United a few weeks back.
That NEW vs WEL game also put into stark vision how valuable Anna Leat is to the Jets. The Fernies number one missed this game through injury and in her place came a 17yo debutant Georgia Ritchie, who had a shocker in the first half as the Nix peppered her with shots that she couldn’t keep out. Her defence weren’t closing down shooters and Vlok in particular punished them for it.
Leat’s conceded quite a few goals and only has two clean sheets from 12 matches... but she’s also made the most saves in the competition by a big margin. Seeing the Jets without her made it clear how much her goalkeeping quality has bailed them out. To her credit, Ritchie was much better in the second half… but before you start feeling too sorry for a youngster chucked into the firing line, know that Pia Vlok is six months younger than Ritchie.
NZ Records Held By Sam Ruthe:
800m – U17, U18, U19, U20
1500m – U17, U18, U19, U20
Mile – U17, U18, U19, U20, Men’s Indoor
3000m – U17, U18, U19
5000m – U19, U20
The 3:48.88 mile that he ran in Boston over the weekend is the fastest ever by an U18 runner worldwide and the fastest ever run by a New Zealander of any age (beating Nick Willis’ indoor record and John Walker’s overall record).
That run (his first competitive indoor race) makes him the youngest man to run under 3:50 in the mile by more than a year and a half.
After winning the 1500m at the NZ championships in February 2025, he became the youngest NZ national championship winner – beating a record that’d stood since 17yo David Norris won the NZ triple jump way back in 1957.
He has the fastest ever 1500m time for an U16 runner, beating Jakob Ingerbritsen’s record.
In March 2025 he became the youngest man to run a sub-four minute mile.
Any one of these facts would be reason to consider him one of the most exciting prospects in kiwi athletics. For him to be piling them all together, and with such regularity (he’s lowered his PB’s in the 800m, 1500m, Mile, and 5000m all since December), puts him into the stratosphere of kiwi athletes who are so good that all the local media forget to use their thesauruses...
RUNNING SENSATION SAM RUTHE! We haven’t seen the likes of this since GOLFING SENSATION LYDIA KO.
Sam Ruthe comes from incredible running stock. Both of his parents won NZ national titles and, on his mother’s side, his grandfather Trevor Wright was a world class marathoner (once finishing second in the European champs) while his grandmother Rosemary Stirling won a Commonwealth Games gold medal in the 800m in 1970 and made the Olympic final in that event in 1972. Stirling was born in NZ but competed for Scotland (her father’s nation), while Wright was English. They moved (back) to NZ in the mid-70s.
Ben Ruthe, Sam’s dad, made an interesting point about the trouble with comparing what his son is doing now with the legends of old when talking to American media after the latest record-breaking run...
“To beat Walker and Snell and all our Kiwi legends who have won Olympic medals, they’re folklore, right? But they weren’t in super shoes, and they weren’t on the BU [Boston University] track. But I still think to be even amongst those names in any form of the sport at 16 is mind-blowing.”
Which is why it’s probably more enlightening to compare him to more recent emerging track stars of his own generation like 25yo double Olympic gold medalist Jakob Ingerbritsen of Norway, 20yo Dutch runner Niels Laros who won the 1500m at the Diamond League final title last year, and 19yo Aussie Cam Myers who held the previous fastest mile time by a 16yo. Ruthe, Ingerbritsen, and Myers are the three youngest runners ever to hit a sub-four minute mile (in that order). This graphic comes courtesy of Lets Run...
Young Bro is out-phenoming the other phenoms.
All Whites Depth Chart (Feb 2026)
GK – Max Crocombe | Alex Paulsen | Kees Sims
RB – Tim Payne | Bill Tuiloma | Callan Elliot
CB – Finn Surman | Tyler Bindon | George Stanger
CB – Michael Boxall | Nando Pijnaker | Isaac Hughes
LB – Libby Cacace | Francis de Vries | James McGarry
CM – Joe Bell | Alex Rufer | Cam Howieson
CM – Marko Stamenic | Ryan Thomas | Owen Parker-Price
AM – Sarpreet Singh | Matt Garbett | Andre de Jong
RW – Callum McCowatt | Luke Brooke-Smith | Logan Rogerson
LW – Elijah Just | Ben Old | Jesse Randall
CF – Chris Wood | Kosta Barbarouses | Ben Waine
(Purely subjective, though based largely on current club form mixed with Bazeley’s selection trends, and always vulnerable to the versatility of these players – ie, if Singh’s not there then more likely Just or Garbett or Thomas plays as the CAM, but for the sake of depth I didn’t pick anyone twice)
Musical Jam...
