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Fiji's young fullback tipped to be star of the future

(Photo by Mark Kolbe/Getty Images)

Fiji vice-captain Tui Kamikamica has tipped young fullback Sunia Turuva as a star of the future after a breakout performance in the 24-14 Test loss to Papua New Guinea.

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Turuva was Fiji’s best player at Campbelltown Stadium on Saturday night, recording more run metres (252) and more post-contact metres (97) than anyone to go with his two tries.

Contracted with Penrith until 2024, Turuva has yet to make his NRL debut and is stuck behind Dylan Edwards in the fullback stakes at the Panthers.

But Kamikamica says Turuva is primed to impress in the NRL once he gets his chance.

“He saved a couple of tries there, he was always putting his body on the line for us,” he said.

“Tonight we were always confident he was going to catch the high balls even though there were people contesting for the ball.

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“To see a fullback doing stuff like that, it gave us a lot of confidence. He’s going to be a very good player in the future.”

Fiji coach Joe Dakuitoga was equally pleased with Turuva’s performance.

“Today was his first game for Fiji Bati,” he said.

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“The way he was catching balls from the back and running the kick returns, it was amazing to see him play the way he did today.”

“I was very impressed.”

Dakuitoga said the absence of Canterbury playmaker Brandon Wakeham hurt his side, especially in attack at the end of sets.

“Kevin (Naiqama) was playing in the halves today because of Brandon Wakeham’s suspension,” Dakuitoga said.

“We’ll try to work on that to prepare ourselves for the World Cup.

“It was good build-up for us for the World Cup. We didn’t get the job done but both teams played very well today.”

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J
JW 2 hours ago
'Let's not sugarcoat it': Former All Black's urgent call to protect eligibility rules

Yep, no one knows what will happen. Thing is I think (this is me arguing a point here not a random debate with this one) they're better off trialing it now in a controlled environment than waiting to open it up in a knee jerk style reaction to a crumbling organtization and team. They can always stop it again.


The principle idea is that why would players leave just because the door is ajar?


BBBR decides to go but is not good enough to retain the jersey after doing it. NZ no longer need to do what I suggest by paying him to get back upto speed. That is solely a concept of a body that needs to do what I call pick and stick wth players. NZR can't hold onto everyone so they have to choose their BBBRs and if that player comes back from a sabbatical under par it's a priority to get him upto speed as fast as possible because half of his competition has been let go overseas because they can't hold onto them all. Changing eligibility removes that dilemma, if a BBBR isn't playing well you can be assured that someone else is (well the idea is that you can be more assured than if you only selected from domestic players).


So if someone decides they want to go overseas, they better do it with an org than is going to help improve them, otherwise theyre still basically as ineligible as if they would have been scorning a NZ Super side that would have given them the best chance to be an All Black.

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