Concreter hoping to cement his spot with Chiefs

Normally at this time of year, Daniel Rona would be toiling away on the tools, doing the hard yakka as a concreter in Taranaki.

But now, all of a sudden, a career change beckons for the 22-year-old, after a whirlwind rise to starting centre for the Chiefs in Super Rugby Pacific.

Not only is Rona uncontracted with the Hamilton-based club, he isn’t even a fulltime injury replacement player, either. In fact, he’s on such a short-term gig that he’s not even guaranteed to be with the team through till the end of the season.

Yet, after two cameos off the bench, then doing the business against All Blacks Rieko Ioane and Peter Umaga-Jensen in two starts, also nabbing a beaut of a maiden try in his 80-minute stay in the win over the Hurricanes last weekend, the 1.87m, 97kg midfielder may just be in for a couple more months yet with the undefeated table-toppers.

While Lalomilo Lalomilo was handed the fulltime deal to replace injured All Black Quinn Tupaea, the Bay of Plenty rep is yet to feature (an injury of his own hampering those hopes) and instead it has been Rona stepping into the breach with the Chiefs enduring something of a midfield injury crisis in also having Gideon Wrampling out until now post-knee surgery, and Anton LienertBrown (ankle injury in round one) and Alex Nankivell (concussion in round five) still on the comeback from their setbacks.

The Chiefs had 18 replacement players join them for pre-season before Christmas, and under New Zealand Rugby’s newly-adopted initiative, teams can select four of those players to receive 30 additional training days. And that has turned out to be Rona’s ticket to the big-time.

The 30 days can be sprinkled throughout the campaign, and the beauty for him is that every week he’s in the playing side, it doesn’t eat into any of those days. A fifth cap will come tonight when he again lines up in the No 13 jersey, against the Fijian Drua in Hamilton.

A step up to Super nearly came last year when he was called to link up with the Crusaders for pre-season, but that six-week stint didn’t quite bring anything like the treats he is lapping up this year.

“I always hoped that I might get my debut this year, but to actually see my name pulled up on the screen when the team got named, it was pretty cool,” he reflected of the moment he found out he’d be pulling on the jersey, in round three against the Highlanders in Hamilton.