He's a passionate Cowboys junior who's proud of his Wellington roots, but the NRL is quickly beginning to feel like home for Kotoni Staggs.
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The former Western Rams star has taken his game to a new level in recent weeks, with another double recorded in the Brisbane Broncos' thumping of the battling Gold Coast Titans on Saturday.
Much of the season has been marred by drama off the field and inconsistency on it but 20-year-old Staggs has been a shining light, having missed just the one game this year.
He's quickly taken on a leading role within the side and is a massive part of the Broncos' surge into the competition's top eight.
While his name is started to get bandied about more and praise has been building - former Queensland great Steve Renouf was the latest last week to speak highly of the Wellington product - Staggs is just pleased to deliver for the a club that showed its faith in him.
"When I first came to the Broncos they brought me in with open arms and I love this club," he told the Broncos official website after Saturday's win.
"It was my dream to play for this club when I was a young kid to be able to do that and fulfil the dream is pretty special."
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Staggs sent the young Broncos side on its way early in Saturday's game, showing his trademark strength and nose for the tryline when scoring a first half double.
The struggling Titans failed to show much fight in the second half as the Broncos cruised to a 34-12 victory.
"I got my hands on the ball early a bit, which was the plan," Staggs said, having scored four tries in his past two games.
"I didn't expect the two tries but we got away with the win, a good win that we needed."
The Broncos have now scored three wins and a draw from their past four rounds and Saturday's result meant they leapfrogged the Newcastle Knights into eighth spot.
It's a big change after the side was languishing in 14th following three successive losses in June.
"There's 25 rounds and we're gelling really well," Staggs added.
"We're training hard and it's that defence which has been working for us."
Next up for the Broncos will be a much more difficult challenge than the one posed by the lowly Titans.
The Melbourne Storm play at Suncorp on Friday night and Craig Bellamy's men will be fired-up for that one after losing a golden point thriller to Manly on Saturday.
"They're on a good roll so we need to put in a good performance for our fans and get that win," Staggs said.
The race for the top eight is heating up and Broncos coach Anthony Seibold spoke about that post-game on Saturday.
"We've worked really hard to give ourselves a chance but we're certainly not getting carried away," he said.
"We've got six games to go. We're only three-quarters of the way through the season.
"We didn't get too pessimistic or too down on ourselves when certain people were bagging us. We're not going to get too carried away now."