Kevin Naiqama came to Wests Tigers in 2015 looking for an opportunity.
His third Club in as many seasons, the Fijian flyer — by his own admission — knew that it wasn't going to be an easy task to lock down a starting spot in a back-line filled with the likes of James Tedesco, David Nofoaluma, Tim Simona and Pat Richards.
Not only did he manage to do just that, however, Naiqama became just one of three Wests Tigers players to feature in every game heading into Round 24 — a remarkable achievement given he'd never played more than eight NRL games a year before 2015.
According to the man dubbed the "Fresh Prince of Concord", it's certainly been his best year yet, and one that he's determined to finish strong with three games left to play.
"I've definitely enjoyed my opportunity here," said Naiqama earlier today.
"There was a lot of hard work that I had ahead of me in pre-season. There was still boys ahead of me, and the spot certainly wasn't guaranteed at all.
"So just to play every game this year has been a huge effort on my part.
"It's something that I set a goal that I wanted to do, and it's really good [that I can achieve it] so hopefully I can finish off the rest of the year playing every game as well."
Picking up eight tries and five try-assists in 2015, the 26-year-old has recently made the move from the wing into the centres with David Nofoaluma returning outside him.
However, having played in the centres earlier in his career, Naiqama said he didn't feel too troubled by the switch, and emphasised that the team's growing familiarity and confidence in the structures will only lead to better things in the weeks and years ahead.
"I've only had the three or four games so far at centre," he said. "I was just talking to JT that the more games I have there, the more I will get better, particularly defensively.
"It's definitely another challenge for me. I played there [in the centres] when I was younger, but not at this level until now, which has been a good test.
"But I've definitely grabbed the chance with both hands, and just want to work on my game and get my hands on the ball more, which is what we're trying to do.
"Obviously we want to win every game until the end of the year," he continued, "but we're just taking it week-by week. This week, we obviously want to win, but that there's things that we want to focus on defensively and executing in attack.
"If we can just build that and finish off the year on a positive note, that'd be good."
See what Kevin had to say in full about this week's game and more in the video above.
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