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Zebre sign New Zealand No.8 Taina Fox-Matamua
By Kim Ekin
Italian URC side Zebre have strengthened their pack with the signing of New Zealand born No.8 Taina Fox-Matamua.
Born in Auckland the powerful backrow plays for Tasman Mako, a club that last year reached the final of the provincial Bunnings NPC top national championship before losing to rivals Waikato.
The 24-year-old has signed until June 2022 and will arrive in Parma in the coming weeks, and will help fill the void of the temporary absences of injured backrowers Johan Meyer and Jimmy Tuivaiti.
“I am very excited to join the Zebras and to give my contribution for this second half of the season," said Taina Fox-Matamua. "I can't wait to reach the splendid city of Parma and to take the field to represent the territory and its fans with honor ”.
Of Samoan heritage, Fox-Matamua grew up playing for Auckland's oldest side, the Ponsonby Rugby Club. After captaining St Peter's College as a schoolboy, he moved to the south island and enters the academy of the Crusaders.
The 6'3, 110kg forward then played for Nelson Marists with whom he won the provincial Tasman Trophy.
He made his Tasman Mako debut comes in 2018, a year after his call-up with the Samoan U20 national team chosen to prepare for the World Cup in Georgia. Since then, Taina has made 12 official appearances, becoming champion of the New Zealand provincial top league in 2019 and again in 2020.
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Latest Comments
Nah, that just needs some more variation. Chip kicks, grubber stabs, all those. Will Jordan showed a pretty good reason why the rush was bad for his link up with BB.
If you have an overlap on a rush defense, they naturally cover out and out and leave a huge gap near the ruck.
It also helps if both teams play the same rules. ARs set the offside line 1m past where the last mans feet were😅
Go to commentsYeah nar, should work for sure. I was just asking why would you do it that way?
It could be achieved by outsourcing all your IP and players to New Zealand, Japan, and America, with a big Super competition between those countries raking it in with all of Australia's best talent to help them at a club level. When there is enough of a following and players coming through internally, and from other international countries (starting out like Australia/without a pro scene), for these high profile clubs to compete without a heavy australian base, then RA could use all the money they'd saved over the decades to turn things around at home and fund 4 super sides of their own that would be good enough to compete.
That sounds like a great model to reset the game in Aus. Take a couple of decades to invest in youth and community networks before trying to become professional again. I just suggest most aussies would be a bit more optimistic they can make it work without the two decades without any pro club rugby bit.
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