By PETER JESSUP AND NZPA
At age 31 Ruben Wiki just keeps on getting better, puzzling everyone from his captain to his coach and Canberra management, who have just offered their best forward a three-year deal.
Wiki wants to stay at the Raiders as a one-club player and will probably take it
but is letting his agent and the club work through the details as he concentrates on repeating his great form of 2003, which included killing off the Warriors in their game at Ericsson last season with a try under the bar.
Wiki puts his longevity in the toughest game down to a good intake of kava, the Fijian boiled root drink.
"A friend put me on to it a couple of years ago and I can definitely feel the benefit," he said.
He drinks it after a game to help repair the body. He reckons it doesn't hurt on Mondays any more than it did when he was 21. "The kava has been a good cure for me." He only drinks alcohol out of season and at special occasions and the training routine has changed because he doesn't have to bulk up anymore.
Wiki said he was still learning from Raiders coach Matthew Elliot and that the friendships he had in the team were motivation to stay there. He takes it game-by-game and is thankful to remain injury-free.
If he needed to find motivation for the Warriors game, it came with a suspension out of the Kiwis-Kangaroos test and five NRL games following a high tackle on Cronulla's Jason Stevens.
"Man, it was frustrating sitting on the sidelines, especially while the team was going through a bad patch [four consecutive losses]."
He and wife Santa, son Denzell, 5, and daughter Mackenzie, 2, are happy in the ACT after 11 years there and despite rumours he's looking around to get a better last-contract deal, Wiki said he could not imagine playing elsewhere.
"Who knows? I'm leaving that to the club and my manager and concentrating on the football. But I couldn't really see myself leaving the Green Machine."
Would the Warriors be an option? "Been there, done that, time to move on," he said.
Asked about the end of Daniel Anderson's stint as coach, Wiki said the Warriors would be desperate to impress after the loss to the Roosters.
"They'll be pumped after what's happened. They'll be playing with a bit of passion on Sunday. Bugger."
Wiki, who was appointed Kiwis captain by Anderson last year, was shocked to hear of his departure.
"I don't know what to say."
Wiki said he had great respect for Anderson's successor Tony Kemp, a Kiwis team-mate at the 1995 World Cup.
"He's the Kiwis assistant. He's a good bloke and he's got some good ideas. I've no doubt he'll do a good job."
Wiki could not explain why the 2002 grand finalists had collapsed so alarmingly this season.
He had not been in contact with the Warriors' Kiwis players since the Anzac test in April.
"Last time I saw the boys everything seemed okay."
He said when he played the New Zealand NRL team, "I feel I have to stand up". His family will all be in the stands, for a start. And because it's a Kiwi team he believes he has to show the go-forward. It's what he's done in previous encounters, leading the Raiders to push the Warriors to a one-point win in the playoffs last season.
In October, he wants to be back in the Kiwi jersey and that, too, is motivation to hold form. "There's people after my jersey." It's a matter of huge pride for him to play for New Zealand.
How long can he keep going?
"As long as they have kava," he laughs.
RUBEN WIKI
* Born January 21 1973, Auckland.
* Height: 1.86m
* Weight: 106kg
* Position: Prop/second rower
* Junior club: Otahuhu
* NRL debut for the Raiders: 1993, 214 games, 59 tries.
* Raider's Player of the Year 2003
* 40 tests 1994-2003
By PETER JESSUP AND NZPA
At age 31 Ruben Wiki just keeps on getting better, puzzling everyone from his captain to his coach and Canberra management, who have just offered their best forward a three-year deal.
Wiki wants to stay at the Raiders as a one-club player and will probably take it
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