Peta Hiku on return to Warrington Wolves with New Zealand

Five years ago, he regularly lit up The Halliwell Jones Stadium during a regrettably short but very sweet spell with Warrington Wolves.

In what was a difficult 2017 season – then-head coach Tony Smith’s last in charge – Hiku’s mid-season arrival from Penrith Panthers saw him sparkle in a primrose and blue shirt and while he could not help them avoid the ignominy of a bottom-four finish, he did play a big role in ensuring they breezed through the Middle 8s.

His 11 games yielded 10 tries but sadly for Warrington fans, the pull of a return home with New Zealand Warriors proved too much to resist.

Since then, his NRL career has taken off with first the Warriors and now North Queensland Cowboys, meaning he was a key part of the New Zealand side that arrived at his old stomping ground to open their Rugby League World Cup campaign.

Peta Hiku during the pre-match Haka. Picture by SWPix.com (Image: SWPix.com)

Fittingly, he marked the occasion with a try as the Kiwis won 34-12 and in speaking exclusively to the Guardian post-match, Hiku waxed lyrical about how special an occasion it was for him.

> Click here for our full verdict on how New Zealand eventually saw off Lebanon in Warrington

And then, there was the question any Wire supporter would have wanted to know – could we ever see him in a primrose and blue shirt again?

“It’s always been sort of there since I came back and it’s always been brought up with my agent,” he said.

“If I was to come back, it would be to come here.”

On returning to The Halliwell Jones Stadium, the 29-year-old said: “It's something I’ve been thinking about.

“I really enjoyed playing here so coming back here to play for my country in this stadium was special and enjoyable.

“My time here really helped me get my career back on track. It was brilliant to come back and play for the fans here.

“With the way I came here and played, I had a bit of free reign as opposed to a lot of structure.

“When you come through at a young age and you’re put in a structure, you change the way you play and you can sometimes forget why you play the game.

“Coming over here got me back to that – they gave me free reign after seeing what I could do in the first couple of weeks.

“I really enjoyed it – the club put trust in me to play my best footy.”

The Kiwis were given a fair scare by their less heralded opponents, who took a surprise early lead and also scored early in the second half to set up a potential upset at 18-12.

However, the class of the world’s number-one ranked side eventually showed as New Zealand flexed their muscles.

After impressive opening-day performances from hosts England and holders Australia, however, Hiku acknowledged the need to improve.

“It was a bit scrappy. It’s not the way we wanted our campaign to start but the positive is we still got the win and we can learn from it,” he said.

“We’ve still got a couple of weeks to get up to our best and hopefully we can work on it from there.

“I knew we’d probably be okay but we had to change our attitude really quickly.

“We had to understand that they were going to pull tricks out of the bag. That’s what they did and they did it very well.

“They came with a lot of aggression and we were brought into the way they were playing.

“That’s not what we want and we’ll have to be a lot better if we’re going to compete with the best teams. It wakes us up about how to approach a World Cup.”