Dargaville's Shane Pumipi had a double reason for celebration over the weekend after his Northern Districts team caused the upset of the round by defeating the competition favourites Auckland 32-30 on Saturday.
Pumipi had just got the news he wanted to hear going into the tough match against Auckland - he
was offered a professional contract with NRL Premiership club Cronulla Sharks the night before.
The 17-year-old will finish school this year and then take up the lucrative contract with the Sydney club starting at the beginning of 2008.
He is hoping to make an early impression with the early on with the Cronulla selectors.
"I'm going to train up hard so I'm ready for the under-20s trial," he said.
Pumipi has been contracted to play in the Jersey Flegg competition but wants to play in the inaugural NRL under-20 competition next year.
The contract made the by the stunning win against Auckland even more rewarding for him.
"It was a pretty good win considering we'd only had one training session together and we didn't really have much of a game plan."
The team is made up of players from Northland, Waikato and the Bay of Plenty but Pumipi said they got to know each other quickly.
"But we bonded pretty well together that night (on Friday) and that helped us when Auckland came back hard at us in the second half," he said.
Northern Districts led the game 20-4 at halftime but any thoughts of an easy victory disappeared when Auckland dominated the second half leaving ND to cling on to victory in the match that was televised live on Maori Television.
The Northern Districts under-18s face the South Island in Rotorua on Sunday in their next game in the competition.
"It's a home game - and it's in Rotorua," Pumipi laughs.
Meanwhile the Northland age-group teams in action at Auckland's Cornwallis Park didn't have the same good fortune with all of the four teams swamped by their Auckland opponents.
One of the Northland selectors Jim Larkin said that, although all of the teams had their moments, their Auckland counterparts were just too big and too fast for the Northlanders.
"Their under-nines were bigger than our under-11s," he said. "Still it was a good learning experience for them to see how the Auckland teams play their football."
