SMILING ASSASSIN: New Zealand Warriors player Krisnan Inu, centre, wearing the mouthguard with fangs made by Peter Smith, left, and Anneka Charteris, of Fraser Smith Lowe Dentists. Times photo Daniel Silverton

• Howick and Pakuranga Times

VODAFONE NZ Warriors rugby league star Krisnan Inu is known as the “Smiling Assassin”, but his trademark grin is looking more vicious this season.

With help from Peter Smith and Anneka Charteris, of Fraser Smith Lowe Dentists in Pakuranga, Inu will be sporting a custom mouthguard bearing a set of werewolf-esque fangs.

“Last year Krisnan asked, ‘can you make me a mouthguard with teeth on the front, but with one missing, as if I’d had it knocked out’,” Smith told the Times.

“So Anneka did that. Then this year he said, ‘that was pretty cool, but this time I want fangs’.”

Inu says his first mouthguard got mixed reactions at Warriors HQ.

“The boys loved the missing tooth one, they were cracking up.

“Players from other teams were looking at me funny and asking if I was alright. It’s a bit of fun.”

Smith has been making the National Rugby League side’s mouthguards “pretty much since the club started”, which takes about three weeks at the beginning of each year.

“The Warriors as a club have always recognised that they’ve got to look after their players. They extend that through to dental and insist the guys get a new mouthguard every season.

“The modern standard is a pressure-mounted mouthguard, where we take a mould of the athlete’s teeth, then a plastic sheet is heated up and sucked over the top of the mould under eight atmospheres of pressure.”

Three layers of plastic are laminated together and come in a wide variety of colours.

Custom models such as Inu’s, or Lewis Brown’s, who has opted for a translucent silver design, take longer to make, and can be a case of trial and error.

“It was a little bit fiddly,” says Charteris. “The fangs are printed on paper and it was a bit of the luck of the draw when we glued it down.”

While Smith and Charteris enjoy the fun aspect of making mouthguards for the likes of Daniel Carter, the Black Sticks and Tall Blacks, there are serious safety benefits that come with the pressure-mounted variety.

“When you go along to Lloyd Elsmore Park on a Saturday and see kids with mouthguards hanging out, that’s the most common type, what we call a boil-and-bite.”

Boil-and-bite mouthguards are placed in hot water which softens the plastic, so it can be fitted over the top teeth.

“The main problem with boil-and-bites is when you open your mouth, they fall out,” says Smith.

“If you get a whack or an elbow or a tackle, it’s not going to stay in place.”

He says while pressure-mounted mouthguards, which start at $170, won’t stop all injuries, “anything you can do to prevent injury is worth it”.

“Losing a tooth is a lifelong injury. It’s not like breaking a leg or an arm, which will heal and be okay. It’s pretty preventable by having a mouthguard that’s just a bit better.”

Charteris adds: “They are more expensive, but they are cheaper than treatment.

“You can wear them for more than one season, as long as your teeth haven’t changed much.”

Not Inu though, who already has next year’s design in mind.

“I’ll get one with Manu’s gold tooth next year,” he says, obviously with a pointed grin.