Sam Hartnett is "fit, raring to go and 100 per cent committed" to leading the Manning River Ratz again when the Lower Mid North Coast rugby union competition kicks off on April 4, according to new coach, Jake Maurirere.
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"Sam has put on five kgs of muscle and looks ready for an outstanding season," Maurirere said this week. "He'll be our No 8 and captain again."
Maurirere was encouraged by last week's initial training numbers, with most of last year's Kennards Hire grand final team indicating their intention to continue playing this winter.
Pleasingly for Maurirere, the club's former industrious inside back, having taken the reins as head coach after a work-related shoulder rotator cuff injury, he will have as assistant coaches, Danial Stone and hefty forward, Steve Rees.
Maurirere will undergo shoulder surgery at Port Macquarie Private Hospital on February 14.
Likewise, returning to the Ratz is their astute fullback, Ricky Campbell, lucklessly suspended on the eve of last winter's grand final. The absence of Campbell, Mitch Carter, David Rees and Maurirere put the premiership shield beyond the Ratz reach in the loss to the Forster Tuncurry Dolphins.
Halfback Bailey Weaver and three-quarters Toby De Stefano and Bruwyn Tisdell were a trio of the most exciting young backs in the competition last winter.
The Ratz will engage in a three-way trial against the Wauchope Thunder and the Hastings Valley Vikings at Wauchope on March 7 before settling on their First XV.
A fourth club from Walcha has indicated its interest in being involved in the multi-club round robin, the intention being to divide the playing times into 20-minute or half-hour segments.
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Meanwhile the persistent ugly rumour would not go away. Now, Matthew Nuku has confirmed he will no longer light up rugby union on the Mid North Coast. "Nuke" has hung up his boots and retired from the game.
Rugby will be the poorer for his absence. At the age of 28 and after a century of appearances for the Forster Tuncurry Dolphins club with premierships in 2013, 14, 15, 16 and last winter, at a time when most players consider themselves in their sporting prime, he is bowing out of the game.
Nuku has been an adornment of the game. Certainly, only the Dolphins' former outstanding NSW Country five-eighth, David Birch, representative partner of Test halfback Steve Merrick, is the club's sole play-maker in almost two decades to compare with him.
Through the hands or off the boot, Nuku was exceptional. More than pace, strength and durability, he possessed a rare rugby perception to sense an opening and capitalise on it, childhood basketball games with two brothers developing in him a rare wizardry in passing and handling the ball.
