NRLWahine Spotlight: Alexis Tauaneai Is The Best NRLWahine You Don't Know About
Alexis Tauaneai was already shining in Aotearoa as a teenager playing for Wellington in the Farah Palmer Cup and since committing to rugby league, the 19-year-old has dominated every level except for international footy. Wainuiomata junior Tauaneai made her FPC debut for Wellington in 2021 and that must have been when she was 16/17-years-old because she made the NZRL Under 18 Girls 'Team of the Tournament' in 2022 before moving to Australia last year.
2023 started with Tauaneai playing prop for Bulldogs in the Tarsha Gale Cup, which is the NSW Women's Under 19 competition. Tauaneai won the TGC player of the year award for Bulldogs and was then awarded the Tahnee Norris Medal for the best player at the National Championships while playing for NSW City, while also stepping up to the Bulldogs NSW Women's Premiership team where she started at prop for their loss in the grand final.
At 18-years-old, Tauaneai started at lock in her first game of NRLW footy and her mahi in that debut set the tone for how her NRLWahine career would look:
52mins, 12 runs - 124m @ 10.3m/run, 3 tackle breaks, 31 tackles @ 88.5%
Given that Tauaneai won the Coach's Award for the 2023 NRLW season and casually averaged 148m/game (more impeccable stats below), it seemed likely that Tauaneai would be on the Aotearoa Kiwi Ferns radar. Unfortunately she suffered an injury late in the season and was unavailable for selection, which is a delightful indicator of Aotearoa's wahine rugby league talent as they defeated Australia without the best young forward in NRLW.
Tauaneai played all 70 minutes in the first four games of this season as a 19-year-old and yet her most impressive mahi came in 65mins vs Eels last week:
18 runs - 202m @ 11.2m/run, 5 tackle breaks, 4 offloads, 30 tackles @ 88.2%
As she missed a few games at the end of last season, Tauaneai dropped down the stat rankings. This season Tauaneai has added almost 10m/game to her mahi in 2023 and she already has more offloads in one less game. This puts the youngster from Wellington in first for offloads, second for tackles made (behind Kiwi Ferns legend Georgia Hale) and third for post contact metres (Otara's Annessa Biddle is still first).
2023
Run Metres: 40th
Post Contact Metres: 26th
Offloads: 11th
Tackles: 27th
7 games, 11 tackle breaks, 11 offloads, 148m/game, 95.9% tackling
2024
Run Metres: 12th
Post Contact Metres: 3rd
Offloads: 1st
Tackles: 2nd
6 games, 1 try, 8 tackle breaks, 15 offloads, 156m/game, 93.6% tackling
Interestingly, Tauaneai apparently signed a deal with Dragons in October last year that was suppose to run through to the end of 2026. Bulldogs recently announced that they had signed Tauaneai for two years as they enter NRLW next season and given that younger sisters Trinity and Paige are also in the Bulldogs system (Trinity has an NRLW development deal with Dragons this year), they are likely to feature in the first NRLWahine crew for Bulldogs as well.
Perhaps Dragons shuffling coach Jamie Soward aside at the end of this season played a role in Tauaneai bouncing out of her deal with Dragons, but the connection with Bulldogs and the possibility of playing with her sisters was probably the key factor. Trinity made the Australian Schoolgirls team this year and along with Paige, they both played in the Bulldogs Lisa Fiaola Cup (NSW U17) team who won that championship alongside a strong crop of young wahine from Aotearoa.
Trinity is currently playing for Illawara Steelers in the NSW Women's Premiership even though she started this year in U17 footy and older sister Brooke has been playing for St George in the NSWWP as another former Wellington rugby representative. Illawara and St George are affiliated with Dragons which highlights the Tauaneai/Dragons connection, but there is a strong chance that the Tauaneai sisters feature prominently in the first Bulldogs NRLW team.
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