Taharoa was front and centre of an epic New Zealand Warriors win over Panthers as Taine Tuaupiki and Te Maire Martin played key roles. Tuaupiki started with a wee mishap as he sent the opening kick off too far but along with Martin's classy touches, Tuaupiki settled into his mahi to provide a classy performance at fullback.

Warriors scored four tries and Martin finished with three try assists, showcasing his clinical distribution to put others into space. As halfback, Martin also did the majority of the kicking for NZW in his best performance of the season. Even though Tuaupiki didn't do any kicking in general play against Panthers, there has been a theme of Tuaupiki building into a bigger role for the NSW Cup Warriors that has been covered in the Aotearoa Warriors Diary for the past few weeks as he built into this winning effort against Panthers.

Summoning mana #UpTheWahs pic.twitter.com/OYzMeqjOYF
— The Niche Cache (@thenichecache) May 19, 2024

Tuaupiki has always been a lively runner and his injection at fullback added much needed zip to the NZW team. Despite being a smaller fullback, Tuaupiki never backs away from tough carries and his speed, as well as sneaky strength, allows him to pounce on any defensive lapse. Tuaupiki finished with 23 runs - 198m @ 8.6m/run with two linebreaks against Panthers and he has put up 180+ running metres in three of his four games this season.

The only game in which Tuaupiki had less than 180 metres was against Raiders when he played just 46 minutes. This gives Tuaupiki an average of 176m/game which is an increase on 132m/game last season and this is packaged with an increase in tackle efficiency with Tuaupiki rolling out 66.6% tackling last season, now at 84.2% this season.

Not only has Tuaupiki improved at the NRL level, he has flourished as a play-maker for the NSW Cup Warriors. Late last year Tuaupiki lined up in the halves for Aotearoa A against Tonga A and while he slotted straight back into fullback for the opening two rounds in NRL, then his return to NSW Cup, Tuaupiki emerged as the leading force in a young NSW Cup outfit.

Tuaupiki played his first NSW Cup game of the season in round five and had five consecutive starts at fullback. NZW lost back to back games in rounds five and six with Tuaupiki putting up 27 kicking metres which was aligned with his mahi from last season at this level (8.37 kicking metres per game). Former Panthers junior Luke Hanson was then promoted to the NSW Cup team from Jersey Flegg and this saw Tuaupiki take on more responsibility in a team that is full of Under 21 youngsters.

In his next three games of NSW Cup, Tuaupiki had 250+ kicking metres: 468, 276 and 272. Each of those tallies is more than his total kicking metres in 14 games of NSW Cup last season (117) and NZW went undefeated in those three games with two wins and a draw. Tuaupiki also started to kick goals more often as he registered one in the first two games, followed by 12 goals across the next three games of NSW Cup.

Add in plenty more touches for Tuaupiki. Last season Tuaupiki had 29.28 receipts per game in NSW Cup and this jumped up to 40.6 receipts this season. Tuaupiki had a dip in his running mahi as he put up 170m/game last year and 143m/game this year, however he has been just as dynamic, if not more dynamic running the footy.

Tuaupiki is holding steady with try assists as he had 0.64 per game last season and 0.6 per game this season. There has been a decent jump up in his linebreaks per game with 0.35 per game last season and 0.8 per game this season. Here's how Tuaupiki's NSW Cup stats compare between seasons...

2023: 14 games, 6 tries, 2 goals, 8.3 km/game, 1 forced droppie, 9 try assists, 5 linebreaks, 73% tackling, 170m/game
2024: 5 games, 2 tries, 13 goals, 208.46 km/game, 4 forced droppie, 3 try assists, 4 linbreaks, 78.5% tackling, 143m/game

Tuaupiki has now played nine NRL games and no one should be surprised by what the little bloke from Taharoa can do. The performance against Panthers was especially intriguing because of how Tuaupiki's role in NSW Cup grew from an excellent running fullback, into a pure leader of the second-tier Warriors. Keep in mind that Tuaupiki is only 24-years-old himself and this highlights his potential, as well as his mana with Tuaupiki emerging as a leader for the young crop.

Tuaupiki and Martin are not the only lads from Taharoa making waves in the NRL though. Xavier Willison is one of the best young middle forwards in the competition and the Whatawhata junior is now averaging 112m/game in limited minutes coming off the bench. This is Willison's first season over 100m/game and he his eight games this season is the most he's played in a season after debuting in 2021.

What do you need to know about Taharoa? It's a village. Not a city or town, it's listed everywhere as a village on the west coast of Aotearoa's North Island. There are roughly 200 folks, probably less, who live in Taharoa and many like Martin, Tuaupiki and Willison leave this small pocket of the Waikato for greater opportunities. Sometimes those opportunities come full circle in returning home and when dealing with the amount of talent coming out of Taharoa, sometimes those opportunities are all about representing this village with excellence.

Enjoy our Kiwi-NRL coverage? Please consider supporting the Niche Cache through Patreon or with a paid Substack subscription. We drop Kiwi-NRL notes each week in our Subscriber Podcast which is only available on Patreon and Substack.

Or you can make a donation through Buy Me A Coffee.

Our Monday/Friday newsletter always has Kiwi-NRL notes too.

Peace and love.