Tysha's wild ride from the drop zone to the end zone three times over

When Warriors winger – yes, we can now call her that – Tysha Ikenasio was summoned by coach Ron Griffiths early last week ahead of the impending team naming, she feared she was about to be dropped.

After all, she’d had a quiet outing in Magic Round against the Titans in Wagga Wagga, not registering a single tackle break, let alone line break, and missing four tackles of her own in the disappointing two-point defeat.

“When he sends you a text to come see me you’re like, ‘Oh gosh, have I done enough',” Ikenasio told NRL.com.

But it turned out the news was far from that bad for the 28-year-old. Not that it was too much less of a shock, mind you, with the regular centre instead at that catch-up with the coach asked to shift to wing for the first time, for a crucial clash against the Knights in Hamilton.

Fast-forward a few days and there she is, Ikenasio wearing a drenched No.2 jersey fresh off the victory song rendition in the FMG Stadium Waikato changing room, and also wearing a big smile after a 22-14 victory where she happened to also bag a hat-trick.

“It’s all thanks to the girls inside, they do all the hard work and I’ve just got to make sure I put the ball down,” the humble hero assessed, after her quickfire double in the second and sixth minutes was iced by an even classier 42nd-minute finish.

Some way to wing it, and some masterstroke it was from the coach, then, to reap
immediate rewards from the shifting of his right-side pocket rocket.

“I can’t take the credit for that,” chuckled Griffiths, who explained the move was centred, literally, around switching Stacey Waaka in a spot to get her hands on the ball more, and that Ikenasio’s penchant for carries out of the backfield to set up the sets would suit wing play.

And not least helped by her attitude to try something new.

“She’s absolutely selfless,” Griffiths said. “She’s one of the best team-mates there is… we often speak as a club about ‘attitude is everything’, and that’s who she is. If you looked ‘attitude’ up in the dictionary you’d see a picture of her.”

Ikenasio’s philosophy on it is simple.

“In our team we’re very competitive, we’ve got girls that can play anywhere, and just every week is that feeling of you want to make that playing team," she said.

“It’s always just a privilege to be on the field, whatever position I’m in I’m going to turn up as best I can and try my hardest.”

Into just her second year of professional rugby league, Ikenasio’s only previous
experience on the wing was actually at international level, when she lined up there in her two tests for the Kiwi Ferns in 2025.

That had capped a whirlwind first season in the code, after the former Black Ferns Sevens representative, who was a travelling reserve for the 2024 Olympic gold-medal-winning team, had opted to sign a three-year deal with the Warriors upon their return from a four-season Covid-forced absence.

Still coming to grips with the nuances of the sport last year, her first visit to Hamilton had ended in terrible fashion, when she was one of two Warriors players sent off in their loss to the Raiders.

After the Warriors went 0-3 in Waikato in 2025, they duly turned that around to 2-0 this year, to reward the decent turnouts of fans in the stands there.

And that latest success was plenty down to Ikenasio’s partnership with fellow former Sevens star Waaka, whose arrival this year has also proved instrumental, and who fed her outside splendidly, as the pair easily got the bragging rights in an intriguing match-up on that side of the park against fellow former NZ Sevens reps Tenika Willison and Cheyelle Robins-Reti.

“For Stace and I, we’ve played alongside them for years, and they’re two of our really good mates, but obviously when you’re on the pitch you see the different uniform and we go hard,” Ikenasio said. “And I think that’s the beauty of the sport, we go hard and then after that it’s cuddles and hello and you’re excited to see your mate.”

There’ll now be another familiar face in the sights this weekend, when the Warriors run out at CommBank Stadium in Sydney on Sunday for a clash with Wests Tigers, who have Kiwi Ferns co-captain Raecene McGregor as their halfback this year, at her fifth different club.

After a victory that was able to push the Warriors two points ahead of the Knights, into fourth on the ladder, this one now shapes as just as crucial, where they could put themselves two clear of the Tigers, who are level with them on eight points, after McGregor’s late strip play came up trumps in a last-gasp 16-12 win over the Dragons.

“Tigers have been outstanding,” Ikenasio warned. “Every game is do-or-die, because we only play each other once. So every round matters.”