FORGET the guest-speaker roles and other promotional duties, Hawke's Bay Magpies first five-eighth Tyrone Elkington-MacDonald has got an ITM Cup start after two years on the sideline.
"It's a massive opportunity. In addition to wanting to help the boys get a win to keep our chances of a home final alive, I want to put in a good performance in the countdown to the end-of-year reviews as I'm off contract at the end of the year," Elkington-MacDonald said as he pondered tomorrow's ninth-round ITM Cup clash against the Southland Stags in Invercargill.
The former Canterbury Colts rep didn't get any Cup game time last year because Ihaia West and Matt Berquist were ranked ahead of him in the battle for the pivot role. The closest Elkington-MacDonald has got to Cup time this season was when he was the only non-playing sub during Wednesday night's 22-all draw with Wellington in the capital.
During one of his guest-speaker stints, the first pre-match function this season before the Ranfurly Shield defence against Northland, Elkington-MacDonald said his main goal was to put as much pressure on West as possible for more game time at Cup level. West has seldom put a foot wrong this season and his goalkicking has added to his list of match-rescue acts.
"It hasn't worked out for me. Ihaia is a quality player and he is the incumbent and there have been a couple of times when Hosser (Andrew Horrell) has been the back-up No10 and closed out games," Elkington-MacDonald said.