Mr Versatile is shaping up as Mr Indispensable
Taleni Seu still has the huge scar depicting the disappointing end to his last Super Rugby season; but now, with an arm of steel - quite literally - he’s shaping up as one of the most important forwards for the Chiefs in this year’s campaign.
The talented 24-year-old might have several more heralded players around him in the pack, but his ability to be ‘‘Mr Versatile’’ is quite the boon, for a team already licking their injury wounds.
Raw and rangy, the 2.02m and 109kg former Counties Manukau representative basketball player had naturally been a lock during his early days, and through his maiden NPC season with Auckland in 2015.
But in a Super Rugby chance with the Chiefs in 2016 under coach Dave Rennie, he then got a first taste of what looked a natural role of blindside flanker, starting there in the opening game of the season against the Crusaders in Christchurch.
The coincidence, then, in the first game of this season - against the Crusaders in Christchurch again that Seu, now under new coach Colin Cooper, gets his first experience of another position, starting at No 8.
And the irony, then, that he should only play around the first quarter of the match at the back of the scrum, before returning to the second row because of the shoulder injury to Dominic Bird.
‘‘I guess that’s what the coaches like about me - if something happens they can put me at lock, or six, or eight,’’ Seu said of these extra strings to his bow.
Those players with versatility can often be unfairly pigeonholed into being bench options, but if they are good enough for 80 minutes there’s no reason why they can’t be the ones to start and then shift during a match.
Seu said he was enjoying ‘‘just learning and gaining experience from different positions and having a different insight on how the game is being played’’.
‘‘When I’ve been playing lock growing up, all my years of rugby, people have been telling me ‘oh, mate, you’re not a lock, you play more like a loose forward’. But I’ve just been locking it down, and I don’t shy away from the engine room.
‘‘The pre-season game for [playing] the Blues they just told me ‘you could be playing eight’ and they named the team and I was playing eight. And from there I guess they liked what they saw, and they’re trying to develop me.
‘‘It’s not really the skill [that’s different], it’s more like the fitness, and just agility in the wide channels. It’s more the detail for eight, there’s a lot of things you need to learn in your head as well.’’
As everyone says, just being anywhere on the park will be good. And for Seu, it’s indeed the case, having missed the last six games of 2017 with a broken arm, which saw a plate and screws inserted and now has him wrapping it in protection.
‘‘It was just stink, because it happened in training, not in a game,’’ he said. ‘‘But I guess it drove me going into Mitre 10 [Cup], it grew a hunger to get back into the game and play.’’
Seu is also well aware of a responsibility to give back to his family, of Niuean descent.
He’s working towards purchasing a house for his mum.
‘‘When you come from nothing and then all this money comes to you it’s real hard to manage. But I’m getting there.’’