France – New Zealand: “butcher”, “Braveheart”, and son of a Samoan legend… Who is Wallace Sititi, the revelation of the Blacks on the express rise?

Eight matches is not a lot, but enough to make a name for yourself when your name is Wallace Sititi. At 22, the New Zealand third row is the new attraction on the All Blacks side. One more. :

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Inducted this summer into the team against Fiji, initially as a substitute, the young man has just made six starts in a row within the team managed by Scott Robertson. Third line training center, it is however with number 6 that it is delivering, at the end of 2024, performances of the highest order. With the highlight, a small recital against the English at Twickenham on November 2. A meeting won by the Blacks (24-22) during which Wallace Sititi covered 80 meters with ball in hand, delivered three passes after contact including a decisive one on Mark Telea's try, and scored 9 out of 9 in the tackle. Or how to make an impression, just as it should.

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Son of former Samoa captain

“He’s a butcher,” Xavier Garbajosa said of him in the columns of Olympic Midday. He was exceptional against England. He won every collision and showed he was a ball player too. We saw him a little less against Ireland (23-13 victory for the Blacks in Dublin, this Friday, November 8, Editor's note) quite simply because he had set the bar so high against the English that it was difficult for him to do better.”

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Handsome baby weighing 113 kg and 1.87 m tall, Wallace Sititi was certainly not born from Jupiter's thigh, but let's say that he had some genetic predisposition to perform in world Rugby since he is the son of a certain Semo Sititi. Who is none other than the former third row and captain of Samoa (59 caps).

Although he was born in the archipelago, in the middle of the Pacific, while his father was playing in Scotland, Wallace Sitit spent the first years of his life in the north of the United Kingdom (five years), then in Japan (seven years), depending on his father's club changes. And it is this Scottish fiber which explains the first name of the current Chiefs player, in reference to William Wallace (1270-1305), figure of the resistance against England immortalized by Mel Gibson in the film Braveheart, released in 1995. “My parents thought William was a little too common, so they used Wallace,” relates the person concerned.

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A crazy year 2024

The country of the long white cloud, the neo-international, only really discovered him at the start of adolescence, when his family decided to settle in Auckland in 2013. That's where he registered. in rugby before catching the eye of the Blues, where he joined the training center, before taking the armband of the under-20 team.

At the start of the 2022 season, seeing that he could not hope for better than a place in the B team, he then bounced around for two seasons with North Harbour, in the local championship, before signing up with the Chiefs . The rest is known. Author of a full season, from his debut on March 9 against the Queensland Rds, until the Super Rugby final which he lost to the Blues at the end of June (41-10), Wallace Sititi was called by the Kiwis coach to the summer tour. An express climb that surprises even the person concerned. “I would never have believed that anything could happen to me, I pinch myself all the time to believe it,” he reported again a month and a half ago. The Blues have been warned, they too risk being pinched very hard.