Tactix title winner Paris Lokotui swaps netball for Canterbury rugby pathway

Mainland Tactix wing defence Paris Lokotui has confirmed she is leaving netball for rugby, with the 23-year-old relocating to Christchurch and joining the Canterbury Farah Palmer Cup wider squad. The move comes only weeks after Lokotui helped Mainland win the franchise’s first ANZ Premiership title and reach the 50-cap milestone of her domestic netball career, and it confirms what had been one of the most-discussed potential code switches in New Zealand women’s sport over the last year.

Lokotui spent three seasons with the Tactix after starting her domestic career at Central Pulse and was a key part of the side’s championship run, anchoring a midcourt that produced one of the toughest defensive efforts the league has seen in recent years. Her decision to step away comes despite Tactix and Silver Ferns selectors continuing to view her as one of the country’s brightest wing defences, a position so deep that she had narrowly missed Silver Ferns selection in the prior cycle behind a stacked group of midcourters.

Rugby is in the family. Her father, Lua Lokotui, played lock for Tonga at two Rugby World Cups and Paris grew up around the game, picking up sevens during her high school years before netball took over. “The Tactix took me in when [I ruptured my ACL] and helped me through that recovery,” Lokotui told PMN, paying tribute to the franchise that backed her through one of the more difficult stretches of her career. The same outlet reports she is fully fit and ready to throw herself at the demands of professional women’s rugby, with the Farah Palmer Cup squad providing both the training environment and the on-field exposure she needs to make the transition stick.

Anyone who has followed Lokotui’s career will not be surprised that she has the athletic base to handle the change of code. Before she left school she had already represented New Zealand in three different sports, lining up for the Secondary Schools netball team, the Junior Tall Ferns basketball side and the under-16 water polo squad. She also played in the Tauihi Basketball Aotearoa league as recently as 2023, slotting court craft and high-pressure decision-making into a body conditioned by elite-level basketball minutes. Coaches who have worked with her say the strength and balance she brings from those backgrounds are what makes her a credible rugby prospect, not just a netball name with a famous surname.

That said, the leap is enormous. A standard netball court is a little over 30 metres long and the game is non-contact. A rugby pitch is more than three times that length, contested by 15 athletes per side and built on the very impact that netball spends most of its time avoiding. Lokotui has already spoken about the soreness that comes with new collisions and the new positional reads that 100-plus metres of green space demand. The Farah Palmer Cup, which runs through the New Zealand winter, is the right entry point — fast, physical and full of pathway-level rugby talent — but it will give her no easy run-ins.

Her stated motivation has two strands. The first is the trajectory of women’s rugby itself, with professional contracts, broadcast deals and Black Ferns visibility all accelerating since the 2022 Rugby World Cup victory at Eden Park and the ongoing build towards future World Cups. The second is the simple pull of family heritage. Lua Lokotui’s career as a Tongan international gave Paris a window into top-flight rugby long before netball took her name into the ANZ Premiership, and it is striking that she has chosen Canterbury — historically one of the strongest provinces in New Zealand women’s rugby — as the place to start.

For the Tactix the loss is significant but not unexpected. The franchise had publicly noted Lokotui’s value when speculation about a switch first emerged last winter, calling her “a strong and commanding presence in our midcourt” and wishing her well on whatever came next. Mainland’s title defence in the 2026 ANZ Premiership will now lean more heavily on the rest of an already strong defensive group, with selectors elsewhere quietly noting another opening in a midcourt picture that has thinned through retirements and Australian-league moves over the past 12 months.

For Canterbury and the wider Black Ferns pathway, the upside is obvious. New Zealand women’s rugby has spent years openly recruiting from netball and basketball backgrounds, knowing that the leap can deliver instant size, leg drive and aerial ability that often takes years to develop in a more conventional rugby pathway. Lokotui’s family rugby exposure, multi-sport CV and netball-honed defensive instincts give her one of the most complete starter profiles a code-switcher could carry into a Farah Palmer Cup pre-season.

Whether she lands on the wing, in the back three or further forward will be one of the more interesting questions of the Canterbury winter. Sevens players and netballers tend to be tested first in the outside backs because of the open-space reads, but Lokotui has the frame to play closer to the action if her tackle technique stands up under contact. Her own answer has been straightforward enough — let the coaches decide where she goes once they have had a few sessions to look at her under load.

Either way, this is the kind of cross-code story New Zealand women’s sport now produces almost as a matter of course. The pathway is built, the coaching is there, and the talent flow is going both ways. Paris Lokotui is the latest to take the leap, and on every measure that matters she has the profile to make it work.

Are you backing Paris Lokotui to push into Black Ferns contention, and would you like to see more cross-code experiments between netball, basketball and rugby? Have your say in the comments below.