Highlanders 2026
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@SouthernMann Jonah Lowe has always impressed me with his work rate not afraid to get involved close to the forwards and find some cheap metres through the middle with his footwork
Not gonna lie I can see something very special being built not just at Otago but also the Highlanders -
Looking at NPC Stats we've got a lot of Cattle in the top ten of most categories. Dylan Pledger, Xavier Titio Harris, Stanley Solomon, Lucas Casey, Josh Jacomb, Cam Millar, Tk Howden, Jona Nareki, Sean Withy, Nikora Broughton, Jonah Lowe, Folau Fakatava, Mitchell Dunshea, Nic Shearer, Sam Gilbert, Taneila Filimone, Will Tucker all are in the top ten of at least one stat categories.
Add to that Caleb Tangitau, Jacob Kneepkins, Veveni Lasanga, Josh Bartlett, Jack Taylor, Oli Haig and Will Stodart who are having outstanding NPC seasons, and a few injured and internationals and you've finally got a battle hardened side with some real depth in most areas for next season.
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@SouthernMann JJ still sees Nareki, Tangitau and JRK as his top back three.
Nareki is rated very highly internally. Hurley still has a lot of kinks to iron out before you can justify picking him as a starter over some of those other guys, particularly JRK.
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Of course Nareki is the primary left winger. We don't want to smash our guys though and there will be injuries. We will have depth that we haven't had, potentially ever. We will can and should be rotating through.
I expect Hurley will primarily be used as a 30 minute impact man. Probably coming on for one of Nareki or Tangitau. Swapping between wing and fullback with JRK.
