Home where the heart is for Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls in South Island tournament
The Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls are aiming to make home ground advantage count at Ngā Puna Wai this weekend – and they want a sea of red and black in the Trillo Metals Stand and on the embankment for the NZRL Men’s Premiership South Island tournament.
Wellington Orcas, Otago Whalers and Southland Rams join the Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls in Ōtautahi Christchurch for a demanding round-robin format across two days at Ngā Puna Wai, striving for the reward of a place in the NZRL National Men’s Premiership semifinals in a fortnight.
“Hopefully we get support out there,” Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls co-captain Kyle Leka says.
“I do know that the games are televised, but I can see the weather’s looking pretty good this weekend.
“So it’ll be cool to get the family and our Bulls supporters out there – hopefully we get a big crowd.”
After two successful seasons under Walt Wilson, the Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls enter their first campaign with Sean Spooner as coach.
Spooner guided Riccarton Knights to a grand final this year – his first as a head coach at club level – and has been putting the Bulls through their paces.
“The coaching of ‘Spoons’ and (assistant) Sam Kelso, they both bring a bit of a flavour to the Bulls, a bit of experience in there as well,” explains evergreen front-rower Leka, whose representative leadership roles go all the way back to co-captaining the 2012 South Island Scorpions with Josh Reuben.
“But it’s been quite physical in terms of our lead-up. We’ve been doing quite a lot of defensive work and just working under fatigue as well.
“It’s going to be a big tournament this weekend – three games over two days – so fatigue would definitely set in, and I think they’re just trying to adapt us to that, to the new format.”
Fifteen players who featured in the CRL Whitehead Plumbing & Gas Men’s Premiership grand final – an epic encounter won 36-30 by Eastern Eagles over Riccarton Knights – will feature for the Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls this weekend.
But club rivalries will be set aside in the name of provincial pride and the red-and-black jersey.
Co-captain alongside Eastern’s Klayton Waikato, Leka says the squad – which has had Eagles players Amby Pulega, D’Angelo Siu-Tauti, Cyrus Timo-Latu and Mita Maamaloa, and Knights Caleb Reweti, Kolio Vailuu and Solomone Leka added to the team initially named last month – is coming together nicely.
“Coming into this tournament campaign, everyone’s just left their clubs on the backburner and concentrated on the whole Canterbury side of things, which has been good.
“We’ve got a bit of continuity, but then there has been a lot of disruption in terms of players [from the original squad named] pulling out and not being able to play.
“So there’s been quite a few new caps being pulled in – and there’s going to be four of us Lekas in the team this year.”
Leka, with son Joel, created history by representing the Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls together last season.
Taniela Leka – Kyle’s brother and Joel’s uncle – was also in the 2025 squad, and this year the trio are joined by a another brother/uncle, Solomone.
“He had a pretty epic season last year but got ruled out due to injury, then he was on the verge this year but he had a wee bit of a knee injury and he managed to claw his way back and make it into that (Knights) grand final team,” Kyle reveals.
“We sort of thought he was down and out, but he ended up getting that call-up this year, which was pretty special for the family. So we’re definitely looking forward to being able to run alongside each other this year.”
With three matches (30-minute halves) to play in under 24 hours at Ngā Puna Wai, fresh legs – and the energy of youth – have a big role to play.
Leka has high expectations for the Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls’ greenhorns, but the veteran hardman has also vowed to lay the groundwork to allow their attacking wares to flourish.
“If you look at the makeup of the team, there’s quite a few young guns on the team.
“You’ve got both Toms (Ruwhiu and Irving) from Linwood who are pretty phenomenal with their footwork and leave me in a standstill sometimes, but yeah, there’s some pretty young talent coming through.
“We’ve got Kyan (Rosie) from Hornby and I think there’s our winger (Julius Mumuta) from Linwood. There’s a lot of young speed around, but then there’s a few old heads like myself and Harold (Kolose) in the middle and we’ve got Jochden (Filimoehala) in there as well.
“So there’s a few heavy hitters that can get them going forward, give them a bit of a platform to work off.”
The Trillo Metals Men’s Canterbury Bulls won last year’s South Island title, played over several weekends, to reach the NZRL National Men’s Premiership final, where Counties Manukau Stingrays proved too strong.
They open this campaign against Southland on Saturday morning, before regrouping for a huge afternoon showdown with Otago. On Sunday morning, the Adrian Shelford Memorial Trophy and Centenary Shield are also up for grabs in a crucial clash with Wellington.
The Bulls had an important warm-up run against a side of Premiers and Premier Reserves players compiled by Shane Tamatea – who were named the Shiners in a nod to the Lion Red Cup team of the mid-1990s, Christchurch City Shiners.
“It was good to actually be able to have a preseason [game] where we can look at combinations and see what works well,” Leka says.
“You never know what happens with the team and injuries and everything else [in a weekend tournament format] so we’ll be trying to mitigate that as best we can.
“Not much is changing in terms of our gameplay. We want to stick to our structures. Sean’s been pretty good in terms of giving us a bit of structure to work to, our landmarks within the field, what we should be doing, what he envisions we should be doing at certain times.
“Because I guess as long as we’ve got that structure in place and we do get fatigued, at least we can resort back to what we trained, which landmarks we want to get to on the field.”
Entry to Ngā Puna Wai for the weekend’s action is free – be there to cheer on our team from the Trillo Metals Stand!
TRILLO METALS MEN’S CANTERBURY BULLS – NZRL MEN’S PREMIERSHIP SOUTH ISLAND TOURNAMENT SCHEDULE
Saturday, September 12
11.30am – vs Southland Rams (Field 1)
3.30pm – vs Otago Whalers (Field 1)
Sunday, September 13
10.00am – vs Wellington Orcas (Field 1)
Matches will be broadcast on Sky Sport, while broadcast replays will be uploaded to the NZRL YouTube channel in following days.
