Hunter Paisami weighing up his future.<\/a> Joseph-Aukuso Suaalii has also moved to outside centre for the Waratahs.<\/p>\nLoading<\/p>\n
But Pakeho \u2013 who Paisami said was \u201cdefinitely putting his hand up\u201d for Test selection \u2013 is adamant he can make his own statement on the international stage, as he vies with Paisami and Josh Flook for a spot in the Reds\u2019 line-up.<\/p>\n
\u201cI think it [Crichton\u2019s addition] is good competition, it keeps everyone on their toes and will make it more competitive and people more hungry for that spot,\u201d Pakeho, who represented the Junior Wallabies at the under-20 World Championships, said.<\/p>\n
\u201cDefinitely, of course it [the Wallabies] is always something I look towards, especially being next to Hunter and Flooky I think I could maybe be there one day too, and hopefully soon. I\u2019m always aiming for that.\u201d<\/p>\n
Pakeho showed impressive signs in his debut Super Rugby campaign last year, managing 12 caps to be named the competition\u2019s Rookie of the Year.<\/p>\n
Those exploits included a standout showing against All Blacks sensation Rieko Ioane in the Reds\u2019 35-21 triumph of the Auckland Blues.<\/p>\n
On that night, in which he played outside centre, he ran for 58 metres \u2013 including a clean break \u2013 while his 14 tackles for no misses kept Ioane contained to just 24 running metres from five carries.<\/p>\n
\u201cI feel like it did,\u201d Pakeho said, when asked if that occasion made him feel like he belonged at that level.<\/p>\n
\u201cBut at the same time, it was just another game to me. I really enjoyed myself that game \u2013 especially coming up against him, watching him on TV I wanted to be like him, so it was a pretty surreal moment.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cWhen I made the switch, I didn\u2019t really look back \u2013 I wanted to play for the Reds.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":496303,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[568],"tags":[64,63,761,762,158,85],"class_list":["post-497054","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\/497054","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=497054"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/497054\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/496303"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=497054"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=497054"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=497054"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}