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'Show me how good you are' - Ngani Laumape's random recruitment pitch to pro players

Ngani Laumape of Manawatu. (Photo by Kai Schwoerer/Getty Images)

Hurricanes and All Blacks star Ngani Laumape has taken to Twitter to recruit for his home town Mitre 10 province Manawatu in an unconventional and unusual fashion.

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The bulldozing second five missed out on World Cup selection and spent the rest of the season tormenting Mitre 10 Cup sides with breakaway performances for his Turbos outfit, showing the All Blacks just what they had missed out on.

https://www.instagram.com/p/B2Cqgzzp8iM/

Now the former NRL star has laid down the challenge for other players to ‘come play for a small town like Manawatu’ instead of ‘hiding behind the bigger cities’.

It is difficult to determine who exactly Ngani’s message is meant for, but the centre wants others to ‘show me how good you are’ playing for a smaller provincial region.

His message was met with a response from fans and pro players alike with former All Black and current Wasps’ flyhalf Lima Sopoaga replying with ‘Stagnation’.

After one punter suggest Laumape isn’t good enough for the big city teams despite Laumape playing for his country and Super Rugby with a franchise in New Zealand’s second-biggest city, teammate Ardie Savea labeled the assertion the ‘joke of the year’.

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Laumape has publicly dealt with his World Cup omission admirably by returning to the Turbos and playing out the season without any fuss despite the circumstances.

The Turbos made the Championship semi-finals before coming undone by Bay of Plenty in a lop-sided match.

With Super Rugby just around the corner, Laumape will soon be pushing for an All Black re-call with Sonny Bill Williams and Ryan Crotty moving offshore after the World Cup.

It’s unknown yet whether Laumape’s recruitment pitch will help the Turbos bring any new players to the Manawatu for next season.

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Flankly 2 hours ago
'Absolute madness': Clive Woodward rips into Borthwick in wake of NZ loss

Borthwick is supposed to be the archetypical conservative coach, the guy that might not deliver a sparkling, high-risk attacking style, but whose teams execute the basics flawlessly. And that's OK, because it can be really hard to beat teams that are rock solid and consistent in the rugby equivalent of "blocking and tackling".


But this is why the performance against NZ is hard to defend. You can forgive a conservative, back-to-basics team for failing to score tons of tries, because teams like that make up for it with reliability in the simple things. They can defend well, apply territorial pressure, win the set piece battles, and take their scoring chances with metronomic goal kicking, maul tries and pick-and-go goal line attacks.


The reason why the English rugby administrators should be on high alert is not that the English team looked unable to score tries, but that they were repeatedly unable to close out a game by executing basic, coachable skills. Regardless of how they got to the point of being in control of their destiny, they did get to that point. All that was needed was to be world class at things that require more training than talent. But that training was apparently missing, and the finger has to point at the coach.


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