HEADING FOR THE OPENSIDE
There's going to be a bit of reverse engineering required when it comes to Dalton Papalii.
He bolted into the public conscious when he unexpectedly won his first test cap in November 2018. Unexpectedly because, honestly, barely anyone had heard of him.
He'd been a bit part player with the Blues in 2018 and while he was in the midst of a strong Mitre 10 campaign with Auckland when the call-up came, he was about as shocked as everyone else.
Test football was not on his radar. Not that year, not when he was only 21 and competing against world class, established talent such as Sam Cane, Ardie Savea and Matt Todd.
He got a little bit lucky that a host of factors conspired to require the All Blacks to dig deeper into their talent pool at openside for their five-test end of year tour.
Cane had broken his neck in early October and was out for nine months. Todd had taken a short-term contract to play in Japan and it took special permission for him to be available, but it was only going to be for four of the five tests.
Cane, Savea and Todd had been the top three number sevens since 2016 and the All Blacks had never needed to look
