The Southern Orcas have declared a significant reason they should receive the NRL's 20th license, and with Kiwi rugby league pathways booming, all suggestions point towards Christchurch holding the second New Zealand team.
With the NRL finalising its $5.3 billion TV rights deal for 2028, the agreement included the action of introducing a 20th team as early as 2029, with all attention now turning towards where the next franchise will be located.
The Southern Orcas, based in Christchurch, are firming as favourites to win the bidding war, with a key element on their side to come out on top over their bidding rivals.
It's no secret the New Zealand Warriors have dominated the sporting landscape in recent years across the Tasman, with their continuous sell-out crowds at home building genuine demand for rugby league.
It is crushing the 15-man code across the country in terms of current hype and support, marked by the club's Anzac Day sell-out in Wellington, while also expecting to fill Eden Park for next year's State of Origin.
Compounding both those achievements is the Warriors' recent endeavour to Christchurch, raising the sell-out sign at the flashy new ONE NZ Stadium when they faced the North Queensland Cowboys in June.
It has shown a legitimate appetite for the code, and the Orcas are keen to strike and capitalise on the hype the Warriors have built.
Orcas managing director Andrew Chalmers has acknowledged the challenge that has emerged, which is establishing pathways to support the fight for rugby league as the number one nation in the country.
Although the Orcas have been silently building their pathways in the background ahead of its bid into the NRL.
"If you look at playing numbers, this last year, just on 50,000 players in New Zealand. And if you look at rugby union players, they claim to have about 155,000 as well," Chalmers told Zero Tackle.
"When you look at it from a population perspective, New Zealand's 5.3 million population and rapidly growing economy wise, it's a very big growing economy, sports mad.
"The Warriors have been so successful. But the NRL as a whole has been hugely successful in terms of the marketplace, in terms of spectators.
"The challenge, of course, is only one team here to be able to capitalise on that and there's a huge, huge opportunity to build on what tremendous work that's been achieved by the Warriors and take advantage of that."
Chalmers enlightened Zero Tackle of the Educational Sports Program (ESP) Trust running in New Zealand, which plays a major role in pathways development for young rugby league talent in the country.
The program also plays a significant role in developing athletes off the playing field, building discipline, guidance, and mentoring for at-risk youth as a charitable organisation.
It is headlined by Chalmers, who acts as the Chairman of the program.
The Trust works in collaboration with two NRL glamour clubs as camp partners, including the Brisbane Broncos and the South Sydney Rabbitohs, while many other NRL clubs work in partnership with camp arrangements for Under-14's Kiwi talent.
The Southern Orcas will work closely with the trust, building a key development tool that will play a major role in securing the 20th license and ensuring a new generation of New Zealand league talent.
"Building elite pathways is absolutely essential. From our perspective, one of the things the Orcas have done, and I'm sort of fortunate because I chair a trust, the ESP Trust, which is 'Education Sports Program' trust," Chalmers added.
"Just to give you a snapshot of the success of the ESP Trust, it's been running since 2020, and if I just focus on the first 5 years of the ESP trusts work, and the first five years, they've had 171 young boys come through that program, and their age between 13 and 14.
"Of the 171 that have come through that program, 69 of those players have signed pathways or development contracts with NRL clubs, 69 out of 171. And 29 of those actually went to the Warriors."
Chalmers revealed the incredible numbers behind the first five years since its inception, with a healthy amount of talent coming out of the New Zealand-built pathways.
ESP graduates include Cowboys rising star Mason Barber, Sharks' Jake White and Sydney Roosters SG Ball duo Filipe Fakauho and Austyn Ah Toon-Hotene.
The trust is also making in-roads into women's pathways, and Zero Tackle can reveal that Chalmers, along with the leading founding trustee Dixon McIver and program director Chantel Dicks, have launched a women's program for the first time in 2026.
The Orcas' managing director stressed the importance of developing talent early and making sure they remain on the right path from a crucial age.
"When you look at that, that's a really, really good picture of what the pathways and the opportunities are that exist, Chalmers said of the ESP's opportunities.
"That leads into, and we're just rolling out at the moment, academies, that are attached to schools. The reason why we're doing that is because it's at the right age group.
"You're targeting those 13 to 14 year olds, you're developing your football IQ and you're doing it in a structured way from a development of New Zealand's own elite competitions, you need to be targeting essential in that age because that's a key age for them to develop all the things that we see as being necessary to be able to evolve into, into high-performance athletes."
The TV rights deal has the Orcas in the hot-seat to enter the competition by 2029, with one broadcaster keen to have a 20th team enter before the turn of the decade, which was agreed upon by all parties.
The NRL is also considering a fifth Queensland team to propel momentum towards the 2032 Olympics in Brisbane.
But the hype in New Zealand cannot be ignored.
The time for the Orcas to strike is now, and there's a plethora of evidence building for its case for a birth into the NRL.
