Originally Posted by
mdrew
Zinzan Martin. He is a superbly talented fullback from Canterbury in New Zealand who unlike a lot of New Zealand young players plays exclusively rugby league. In 2015 he represented the South Island Scorpions U15 side after being selected in that side from representing Canterbury U15’s. he played his club football in the Canterbury region with the Hornby Panthers at the U16 level and started at fullback in their Grand Final victory against the Linkwood Keas to 28 – 6. He also played schoolboy rugby league for St Thomas Canterbury College and was part of their Rugby League Nines team which one a major South Island Nine’s tournament and was named in the All-Tournament Team.
Again I will qualify my comments on the basis that I am using video streams of matches as a reference and I have not seen him play live.
When he runs the ball, he is exceptionally quick and explosive, with exceptional speed, both off the mark and when he gets into open space. He also can step off both feet exceptionally well and also has a great swerve whilst maintaining top speed. On a number of occasions when he made a break, his support could not keep up and thus he used his incredible footwork and speed to beat the opposing fullback by himself. In attack he seemed also to play up in the line quite often and was his team’s primary attacking option in the streams that I saw.
In addition he also has the ball playing skills to set up his support runners and get them lines to run into when defenders came out of the line to negate his time with the ball in hand. He obviously was a key target for defences but he understands that he cannot do it all himself and thus became adept at drawing defenders out of the line and putting his support runners into the subsequent hole. As his play making skills continue to evolve, the attacking possibilities appear endless.
In terms of running the ball back from kicks, his timing and anticipation means that he gets to a lot of balls on the full and makes a quick decision whether to run the ball flat out back into the oncoming defenders or look to create an opportunity by running across field. Regardless he is an absolute handful to tackle with his speed and evasion skills from the views seen to date.
Defensively in the fullback position he understandably he does not make a huge amounts of tackles but the ones he makes are the ones that need to be made. If an attacker runs directly at him, he will come forward to cut down the time the attacker has to make a decision and he will hit very hard and does not fall for a dummy in those situations. An impressive attribute that he does seem to have is ability to force attackers who are in open space to try to beat him down the side line. He will stay inside the attacker and force him in the required direction and then use his timing, closing speed and anticipation to make the tackle, usually forcing the attacker into touch.
Moving to the current 2016 season, he will continue to play his club football with the Hornby Panthers again at the U16 level as they look to repeat their 2015 Grand Final success and also schoolboy football for St Thomas. He should also be selected in the South Island Scorpions U17 squad for the New Zealand Age Championships which will be held in July this year. I have not seen him play anywhere but fullback so I will make the supposition that that is where his future lies.
Even though I have seen limited amounts of football, he really does project from a style perspective as a similar to New Zealand Warriors and New Zealand Test International Roger Tuiavasa Sheck with his effortless running style and the fact that he seems to be able to change direction on the spot with no discernible loss of speed.
He is still a couple of years away from being NYC ready he it will be interesting to follow his career as he comes from the rugby mad region of Canterbury.