Oct 19, 2025, 04:10 AM ET<\/p>\n
Dylan Brown has risen from the depths of a difficult 2025 to prove the defining man for New Zealand, leading the Kiwis to a 24-18 win over Samoa.<\/p>\n
In an epic Pacific Cup opener that again proved the tournament’s marquee status in rugby league’s calendar, the Kiwis rebuffed two Samoan comebacks in Auckland on Sunday.<\/p>\n
The visitors blew two crucial chances in the final seven minutes, spilling the ball twice with the line wide open.<\/p>\n
Ultimately it was Brown who proved the match winner, after a season where he spent time out of Parramatta’s team ahead of his exit to Newcastle next year.<\/p>\n
With Samoa charging home hot, the Eels five-eighth gave New Zealand a six-point lead when he leapt high to take a Kieran Foran kick with six minutes to play.<\/p>\n
Dylan Brown in action for the Kiwis.\u00a0Photo by Hannah Peters\/Getty Images<\/p>\n
The Kiwi No.6 then did well to get the ball around the upright and to the line, with the bunker clearing Brown of a double movement.<\/p>\n
Brown had earlier also produced the defining play of the first half, giving the Kiwis an 18-12 lead at the break.<\/p>\n
With Samoa carrying all the momentum and the score at 12-12, it was a banana kick from Brown that fooled Brian To’o Matt Timoko to dot down for the Kiwis.<\/p>\n
Samoa must now pick up the pieces ahead of their clash with Tonga next week, with Jazz Tevaga, Ata Mariota and Jaydn Su’A all suffering concussions.<\/p>\n
But there was still plenty to like for the 2022 World Cup finalists, who were hunting their first win over New Zealand with Payne Haas now in their side.<\/p>\n
After falling behind 12-0 at the 20-minute mark via a Casey McLean double, Samoa were able to get back in the game via some great hands from Deine Mariner.<\/p>\n
The Broncos centre was able to reach behind him to collect a quick Roger Tuivasa-Sheck pass, dummy and then split the line to score.<\/p>\n
Samoa’s next came in bizarre circumstances, with Kiwis fullback Charnze Nicoll-Klokstad becoming entangled in a fence when batting back an attempted 40-20 from Chanel Harris-Tavita.<\/p>\n
That allowed Simi Sasagi to chase through, pick up the ball and score untouched with no Kiwis in the picture.<\/p>\n
After getting it back to 18-18 late, Samoa looked set to take the lead when Jarome Luai grubber-kicked for Blaize Talagi, only for Mariner to spill a pass back on the inside.<\/p>\n
And even after Brown put the Kiwis ahead, Samoa could have levelled in the dying minutes had To’o not put down a Mariner pass close to the line.<\/p>\n
The result means Samoa will need to beat Tonga next week to have any hope of reaching the Pacific Cup final, while New Zealand have a week off before hosting Tonga in a fortnight.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Oct 19, 2025, 04:10 AM ET Dylan Brown has risen from the depths of a difficult 2025 to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":224967,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-224966","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-nrl","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-national-rugby-league","11":"tag-nationalrugbyleague","12":"tag-nrl","13":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224966","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=224966"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/224966\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/224967"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=224966"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=224966"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=224966"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}