NZ U20 Hookers

With the recent injury troubles at the Crusader hooker department, concerns have been expressed about the lack of depth in the position at the franchise. As it happens, three of the likely 2025 NZ U20 hookers have strong connections to the Crusader academy, with Manumaea Letiu and Eli Oudenryn being in the wider training squad while Shaun Kempton came through the same system before switching to the Highlanders. So I thought it was a good time to take a closer look at the 2025 crop of NZ U20 hookers and see how they could provide impact in the near future.

Spotlight: Ball-playing hookers

Hookers, much like midfielders amongst the backs, are often all-round players, equally proficient at manipulating the nuanced mechanisms of the maul as they are at rampaging down the tramlines like a full-blown winger. This all-round nature of the hooker, however, also has its potential downsides, with certain hookers fitting the expression, “Jack of all trades, master of none.” This type of hooker typically does his core roles well but often struggles to consistently impact the contest, lacking a concrete edge which makes their game stand out.

One can argue, for example, that someone like Kianu Kereru-Symes was more adept at his core roles than his predecessor of the year before, Asafo Aumua. Aumua could struggle with his throwing and at times neglected some of the tasks expected of a front-rower, such as moving bodies at ruck time, in favour of carrying. But there is little doubt in anyone’s mind, I presume, about who impacted the game more, with Aumua scoring a freakish hat-trick in the 2017 U20 World Championship final and being a menace across the park throughout the entire tournament.

The 2025 class of NZ U20 hookers aren’t perfectly polished. All of them have their own flaws and work on’s, which is only to be expected of such young players. But what is positive to see is that they all clearly have an edge to their game, something that makes them stand out and which allows them to consistently impact the game. To further highlight this, I want to take a brief look at a game from 2023, the NZ Schools game against the NZ U18 Barbarians. All four hookers in this match – Manumaea Letiu and Shaun Kempton (NZ Schools), and Eli Oudenryn and Kaleb Tapara (NZ U18 Baabaas) – will come into consideration for selection for this year’s U20s team, making it an interesting game to focus on.

Letiu, who started this game as the starting 2 for NZ Schools, has already earned selection for the NZ U20s in 2024, and will be a strong favourite to claim a position in the 23 of this year’s selection. Letiu, like many before him, can sometimes struggle with hitting his target during the lineout, although it is by no means a worrying facet of his game at the moment. Where Letiu excels is his decision-making on attack. The Canterbury hooker has excellent offensive instincts, exemplified by his ability to put players into space and aided by his own dynamic body positioning when carrying, allowing him to get into the exact positions he wants to.

The Canterbury hooker’s playmaking abilities are perhaps already relatively well-known, after producing a bit of magic on the side-lines in the NZ Schools’ game against Australia U18 in 2023 and which appeared in the highlight reels:

Letiu with the flashy try assist against Australia U18 in 2023

But this is not some rare occasion for Letiu, his playmaking ability rather a consistent contribution to the collective team efforts. Early in the game against the NZ Barbarian U18s, for example, Letiu receives the ball unexpectedly after the Barbarian lineout goes astray.

Letiu setting up another try

In quick succession, he (1) runs into the space, (2) uses Tengblad as a decoy to beat a defender, and, when noticing Pledger running off his shoulder, (3) immediately passes to the latter for the try.

What Letiu is really good at, in other words, is keeping the game very simple: keep the ball in two hands, keep your options continuously open, and play into space.

Letiu's one step with the ball before passing fixes the defender

This passage of play is innocuous enough, but Letiu does everything right to fix his defender and make sure the line-break proceeds as smoothly as it can. Letiu’s combination of dynamic carrying and passing abilities make him a difficult player to contain from a defence’s perspective, as he has multiple ways to break the line.

His back-up in this game, Kempton, possesses a lot of similar strengths. Like Letiu before him, Kempton slotted in seamlessly as a distributing ball-player, both as part of a structured attacking shape as in more fluid counter-attacking situations.

Kempton excels as a distributor

Kempton is a quite lanky and slender hooker but what he lacks in size he makes up in speed and work-rate.

Kempton catches Cooper Roberts, makes the tackle and immediately gets back up to contest, leading to a turnover

Through his distributional and defensive ability, Kempton acts more like extra loose forward on the pitch than a typical front-rower, a role which is well-suited for providing impact of the bench.

While the NZ Schools hookers impacted the game through their passing and attacking vision, their Barbarian opponents – Eli Oudenryn and Kaleb Tapara – lived up to their team’s name and expressed themselves through barnstorming carrying and breakdown brutality. Oudenryn was a consistent menace at the breakdown in this game, constantly disrupting the NZ Schools’ attacking breakdown and successfully pilfering the ball on two occasions.

Oudenryn getting over the ball

Tapara, the youngest of the bunch (U19 in 2025), continued Oudenryn’s breakdown dominance while adding some real angry running to the game. Tapara provided a nice contrast to Letiu’s and Kempton’s subtlety on attack, by simply grabbing the ball and smashing into a bloke as hard as possible.

Kaleb the Barbarian

It’s a reliable facet of Tapara’s game to just run it straight, with another nice example to be found in the Chiefs U18 game against the Blues U18. As the play is clearly designed for this kind of run from the hooker, it’s clearly a known strength to his game.

The 2025 class of NZ U20 hookers is an intriguing mix of subtle skills and brute force, which could be cultivated into a potent weapon by a coaching group able to figure out a game plan to maximize those different skillsets. None of these young players are the finished product: Letiu and Kempton have a habit of going for the 50/50-play; Oudenryn needs to find ways to be more involved on the attack; and Tapara can improve his throwing. But they all have a genuine edge to their game which allows them to consistently impact the contest. And, especially in age grade rugby, this kind of edge is often a bigger contributor to winning rugby than sheer all-round solidity, as the game is a bit more loose, unstructured and forgiving to the occasional risky play.

Further points of discussion

The scrum, as always, will be an important part of the team’s overall performance. Sika Pole (Auckland) and Logan Wallace (Manawatu) will be the likely frontrunners for the starting jerseys, having been part of the 2024 NZ U20 squad. Wallace will have to improve his scrummaging, though, as he was penalized (correctly, in my opinion) multiple times for collapsing the scrum against the French U20s in their pool game. Wallace has a number of things going for him: he’s a big body with a solid engine and quick feet, which isn’t a very common profile. But if he can’t keep up the scrum then he might face some real competition for the spot. Someone like Apai Ma’u Hinkes (Counties Manukau), the Chiefs U20 prop, will stake his claim. Other tightheads, like Sione Mafi (Tasman) and Tamiano Ahloo (U19, Auckland) will come into consideration as well.

Raharuhi Palmer (Waikato) and Kane Paranihi (Tasman) are hard-working props who were excellent for the Māori U18s in 2024 which could propel them into contention for spots. Others, like Robson Faleafa (Auckland), Tonga Helu (Canterbury) and Samiuela Moimoi (Tasman) have earned representative honours in recent years so will have a shot to impress once again during the Super Rugby U20s tournament.

While it’s hard to predict how a scrum’s going to go, the coaches will have their work cut out for them finding the right combinations. There’s talented props in the group but, as far as I can tell, few scrumming specialists. The set-piece might be a bit of a challenge for this group which, to be fair to them, is not that uncommon for the NZ U20s.