'Very bright future': Nikorima on nurturing the talents of Katoa

While his young halves partner Isaiya Katoa has been commanding all the headlines, Kodi Nikorima has been playing a key supporting role in helping the Dolphins turn their season around.

Katoa has received plenty of praise for his recent performances, including his starring turn as the Dolphins downed the Storm for the first time in their history on Good Friday.

“I love playing with Issy, I’ve said it before, he's an old head on young shoulders,” Nikorima told ljmpta.com.

“He plays nice and square, he allows players like myself and 'Hammer' to have a lot of freedom, have a lot of room to play our footy and at such a young age to be doing that, he’s got a very, very bright future.”

Now in his 11th season in the NRL, Nikorima is well settled in the halves, with coach Kristian Woolf also praising the Māori All Star for taking the pressure off Katoa to help him unlock his form through a tough opening few rounds.

Nikorima said he was hoping to see his side continue to build against some tough opposition – starting with their trip down to Canberra this week – despite facing some renewed challenges with the loss of key forwards Jeremy Marshall-King (infection) and Felise Kaufusi (MCL) to injury.

"Every game I have a mindset to be good defensively first, I understand that good defensive teams will be there come playoff time,” Nikorima said.

“We didn't start like that the first four weeks, but to our credit, I thought we've hung in there and now we're starting to defend our errors a lot better, defend our tryline a lot better and we're reaping the rewards of our strike that we have out wide.

“We've got a bit of time to recover and fix any little niggling injuries that the boys have and to be honest, if we do have players out, there's the ‘next man up’ mentality here and whoever comes in, I'm sure they'll do their job.”