The Mangere East Hawks junior was an integral part of the Warriors' Under 20s title successes in 2010 and 2011, playing alongside the likes of Shaun Johnson, Konrad Hurrell and Ben Henry, but he struggled to adjust to the intensity and week to week grind of NRL football. Watching on as his NYC teammates progressed quickly, the prop or lock found his path obscured by club legends such as Micheal Luck and Simon Mannering.
"I was looking at them thinking I'm not that far off, if they can make it, I can ... Once they broke through I kept training hard but there were guys way ahead of me and the only way I could get a break was not to compete with them but to learn from them."
He made three more appearances under 2012 coach Brian McClennan, but was involved in only eight games during last year's campaign, before finding greater consistency as a member of the starting 13 or coming off the bench over eight matches this season.
Luck says he was always confident Ikahihifo had the ability and admires the hard work he has put in to reach the standard required for NRL.
"Those other guys came through out of necessity. There was a couple of shortfalls in the NRL squad where we needed to fix pretty quickly and those guys, whether they were ready or not, were thrown into the mix," he explains.
"Seb's done it the traditional way, doing a bit of time in reserve grade and earning his stripes. And through doing that he's made the transition where a few of those other guys had hiccups along the way because they'd been thrust in pretty early. A fair few young guys come in and their first few games are good and then they hit a plateau. Seb probably struggled with that challenge for a little while but at the moment he's overcome it," Luck said. "I'm pretty regretful that I didn't get to play more footy with him during that year because he's a guy that I had plenty of time for and it's good to see him going well now."
Ikahihifo feels his early issues had a lot to do with his desire to rip in and a tendency to overplay his hand.
"That's not just Sebby but a lot of young guys that come in. They're enthusiastic, they want to get on the field and do everything all at once in their first couple of games," Luck said.
"He was pretty gassed after five minutes and I just said to him, you've got to learn when to take your breaks and look at periods in a game where you don't have to get involved that heavily and during that time you can maximise your recovery. "
With more experience, Ikahihifo is making an impact in both defence and attack for the Warriors.
"I'm still finding my feet and I know I can be better," Ikahihifo says.
"Mostly on defence because we've got enough attacking players."
