Hep Cahill hails from Napier in the Hawkes Bay region on the North Island’s East Coast. People from Napier and the Hawkes Bay area have a special reputation for toughness in New Zealand: the region was the scene of some of the most savage fighting in the Land Wars of the 1860s.
Hep played both junior rugby league and rugby union in Hawkes Bay and won prominence as a regional rugby schoolboy representative.
He travelled to Sydney in 2004 to try his hand at professional rugby league and asked for trials with the Sydney Roosters (a similar pathway to the Roosters Kiwi international winger, Shaun Kenny-Dowall).
Cahill played Jersey Flegg with the Roosters in 2005 and 2006 and made a good impression as a hard-running, tough tackling lock forward. He had a bad run with injuries in the latter part of 2006 and in 2007 that left him wondering whether to stick it out in Sydney.
He has really blossomed in the 2008 season with the Roosters’ partnership club the Newtown Jets in the NSW Cup competition, the former NSWRL Premier League.
Cahill is now regarded as one of the form forwards in the NSW Cup and he was a key player for the Newtown Jets in their recent narrow NSW Cup Grand Final loss against Wentworthville.
Cahill’s background has fitted right into Newtown’s street-battler ethos – the player down on his luck who comes to the Jets to salvage his career prospects.
The Jets have the well-earned image of being rugby league’s “Last Chance Saloon.” For example, the career of Manly-Warringah’s Glenn Hall looked to be finished but a strong Premier League season with the Jets in 2006 saw him win a contract with the Sea Eagles and a place in their 2008 NRL Grand Final starting line-up.
Hep Cahill is a text-book example of the type of part-time professional who used to typify the Sydney rugby league playing scene – the no-nonsense bloke who would drive up to training in a battered utility with his tools of trade in the back tray, and then train the house down to gain a place in his district club’s first grade team.
There are still dozens of players in this category, particularly in a good standard second-tier competition like the NSW Cup – those players who work in full-time blue-collar jobs, train four afternoons a week and play alongside full-time pros from their NRL partnership club.
Cahill was exactly that type of dedicated part-timer who is looking to grab every chance in trying to secure an NRL contract.
The good news aspect of this story is that Hep Cahill, the Kiwi teenager who came to Sydney to chance his arm in the unforgiving world of professional rugby league, looks like he has snared a full-time contract with the Melbourne Storm.
No one is more deserving of this lucky break than this gutsy youngster from the North Island’s East Coast.
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