{"id":366746,"date":"2025-12-23T13:30:22","date_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:30:22","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/366746\/"},"modified":"2025-12-23T13:30:22","modified_gmt":"2025-12-23T13:30:22","slug":"nrl-news-2025-19-year-old-talent-zaidas-muagututia-surprise-candidate-to-replace-lachlan-croker-at-no-9-at-manly-sea-eagles","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/366746\/","title":{"rendered":"NRL news 2025 | 19-year-old talent Zaidas Muagututia ‘surprise’ candidate to replace Lachlan Croker at No.9 at Manly Sea Eagles"},"content":{"rendered":"

A 19-year-old fresh out of school is shaping up as a shock contender for the Manly<\/a> hooking spot next season.<\/p>\n

With Lachlan Croker having to medically retire<\/a> and Gordon Chan Kum Tong switching to the Bulldogs<\/a>, Manly’s hooking ranks are looking very thin.<\/p>\n

The Sea Eagles have sprung a major surprise by naming Zaidas Muagututia – a teenager with Samoan heritage – in their top 30 squad.<\/p>\n

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A NSW under-18 City representative this year, Muagututia has been a standout in the NSW Cup and is likely to be given his chance in the NRL<\/a> at some stage of next season.<\/p>\n

<\/p>\n

Zaidas Muagututia is shaping up as a shock contender for the Manly hooking spot next season.\u00a0NRL Imagery<\/p>\n

He is one of only three hookers in the top 30 – the incumbent Jake Simpkin and Roosters signing Zach Dockar-Clay being the others.<\/p>\n

“Zaidas is a very talented kid and really impressed us in his first season with the club this year,” a Sea Eagles insider told Wide World of Sports.<\/p>\n

“He is smart out of dummyhalf, reads the play well and has speed.<\/p>\n

“He has a way to go, but he is definitely a player with potential.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A 19-year-old fresh out of school is shaping up as a shock contender for the Manly hooking spot…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":366747,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-366746","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-nrl","tag-au","tag-australia","tag-national-rugby-league","tag-nationalrugbyleague","tag-nrl","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366746","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=366746"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/366746\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/366747"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=366746"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=366746"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=366746"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}