Breakout All Blacks star Wallace Sititi in doubt for Chiefs’ Super Rugby Pacific season with injury

Thursday, 16 January 2025

Chiefs manager Martyn Vercoe recalls the story of how All Blacks rising star Wallace Sititi ended up in Hamilton.

The Chiefs have suffered an early setback before a ball is even kicked in the 2025 Super Rugby Pacific season, with breakout All Blacks star Wallace Sititi set to miss at least some of the campaign through injury.

The explosive loose forward, who capped off a remarkable rise in 2024 by being crowned World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year as well as All Blacks Player of the Year, is set to start the new season on the sidelines.

The Waikato Times understands the 22-year-old is carrying a knee injury sustained on the northern tour which will require surgery and rule him out for a chunk, if not the entire, Super season, which kicks off on February 14 and runs through till June 21.

Sititi and fellow All Blacks players are still on leave and won’t rejoin their Super sides until later in the month, but Chiefs coach Clayton McMillan will front media on Thursday and is expected to provide an update on his status. Sititi, after being overseas on holiday, was understood to have earlier this week still been waiting to see a surgeon to determine the seriousness of the injury.

Amongst something of a loose forwards injury crisis for the All Blacks on their end-of-year tour, with Luke Jacobson, Dalton Papali’i and Ethan Blackadder all ruled out, Sititi ended up not only featuring in all five matches against Japan, England, Ireland, France and Italy, but going 80 minutes in all of them as well, continuing to shine with his powerful ball-carrying, excellent work-rate and slick skills.

That came after a test debut off the bench against Fiji in San Diego in July, before eye-catching showings in the Rugby Championship against the Springboks and Wallabies, as his meteoric rise did not stop.

Wallace Sititi enjoyed a meteoric rise in 2024, to be crowned World Rugby Breakthrough Player of the Year as well as All Blacks Player of the Year.

Having originally just been hoping to merely play a single game for the Chiefs in his first season as a contracted Super player, Sititi, after two bench appearances across the first half dozen rounds of last season, went on to make the No 8 jersey his own, highlighted no better than his sensational showing in the semifinal win over the Hurricanes in Wellington, which essentially secured his national call-up.

And as the Chiefs ready for what they hope will be third-time lucky after successive runner-up finishes the past two years, there will be any number of fingers crossed that their new back-row superstar won’t be out of action for long.

McMillan’s side, who will already be without the Japan-bound Shaun Stevenson for their opening three games, don’t have the easiest start to the competition ahead of their first bye in round seven.

They open up with a final re-match against the Blues at Eden Park on February 15, then have home games against the Crusaders and Brumbies, before facing the Fijian Drua in Lautoka, travelling back to host the defending champion Blues in Hamilton, then jetting to Tonga to take on Moana Pasifika.

Sititi’s absence will leave a huge hole to fill, albeit with two other All Blacks loosies in their ranks in second-year captain Luke Jacobson, who missed the northern tour due to a fractured thumb, and the hard-hitting Samipeni Finau.

It could also open the door in the back-row for the newly-signed Jahrome Brown from the Brumbies or second-year youngster Malachi Wrampling, who didn’t take the park in 2024, while Kaylum Boshier and Simon Parker are other options, along with versatile second-rowers Naitoa Ah Kuoi and Jimmy Tupou.