Northland's Kadince Christensen has created plenty of interest among the rugby league community with an impressive campaign for the New Zealand Resident 16s.
The Whangarei Boys High School student played over half a game with the representative age grade side in a one-off game with the Queensland Academy of Sport 16s at Papakura's Massey Park, on Tuesday.
"It was really good - I think I played the best game I have ever played," he said.
NRL scouts were on the sidelines, and liked what they saw of the 15-year-old second rower who has only played league for two seasons. Following the trans-Tasman clash, one offered him the chance to head over to Sydney to check out the Parramatta Eels set up in December. While there has been no pen put to paper yet, Christensen said if he had the chance to play for a feeder NRL club he would jump at the chance.
Christensen relished the experience of training and playing with the NZ Residents, and said he learnt a lot from being around some of the best coaches in the country.
It was a close game on Tuesday, played in unpleasant weather conditions, which made handling extremely difficult for the teams, especially in the second half when both struggled to complete their sets of six.
While they made good metres up the middle of the park, neither team were able to finish their attacking raids as strong tackles by their opposition regularly resulted in the ball being knocked free or dropped and knocked on.
In the end the game was drawn, 14-14 and Christensen produced an accurate and solid performance, using textbook technique. The main challenge for the team was the weather - and also the size of the Australians, he said.
"They were quite big boys, who were really structured and just knew how to play the game really well."
The Queensland Academy of Sport rugby league programme was started in 2000 by Wayne Bennett, then Brisbane Broncos coach, as a way of finding future State of Origin stars. The players come into camp twice a year and Kurt Richards, Brisbane Broncos 20s coach, is their part time coach. The team have been in NZ for ten days, playing two games, one against a NZ Maori 16s team at the ground last weekend and this.
By contrast the NZ Resident 16s team was drawn from five of the NZRL National Competition 15s teams and the National Secondary schools tournament and only came into camp last Friday. Their coach Jeff Whittaker said he was really very proud of the boys who gave it their all in trying conditions.
NZ Resident 16s: 14 (Tuimoala Lolohea, Lafu Feagauga, Reubenn Rennie tries; Lafu Feagauga penalty).
Queensland Academy of Sport: 14 ( Nathan Wilson, Ryan Mitchell, Jayden Berrell tries; Ashley Taylor conversion).
Halftime: 10 - 8 Queensland Academy of Sport