Connacht Rugby and the IRFU are pleased to announce the recruitment of back row forward Nepia Fox-Matamua for next season.<\/p>\n
The New Zealand born flanker, who has played for ITM Cup side Auckland, has signed a two-year deal with the Irish province.<\/p>\n
Debuting for Auckland in 2012, Fox-Matamua returned to the provincial squad in 2014 after a year-long spell with North Harbour, where he also played Sevens rugby. <\/p>\n
The 23-year-old will arrive at Connacht for the beginning of the pre-season period in June. <\/p>\n
Commenting on the new signing, Connacht Head Coach Pat Lam said:<\/p>\n
“We’re delighted to be in a position to announce Nepia. With Willie (Faloon) returning to Ulster, another quality openside flanker was needed for next season’s squad.<\/p>\n
“I have worked with Nepia at Auckland. He is a great team man and having captained different sides in his young career, he also possesses excellent leadership qualities. Technically he is an out-and-out number seven with natural ball skills that have seen him excel in Sevens rugby as well. I know that he is the type of player and person that will fit in very well to the Connacht community.”<\/p>\n
CEO Willie Ruane added:<\/p>\n
“In addition to the high number of current players committing their futures to Connacht, it’s great to be adding to the quality and depth of the squad with a player like Nepia. We are confident he will bring a lot to our environment as we bid for honours in both the PRO12 and European competitions.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Connacht Rugby and the IRFU are pleased to announce the recruitment of back row forward Nepia Fox-Matamua for next season. The New Zealand born flanker, who has played for ITM Cup side Auckland, has signed a two-year deal with the Irish province. Debuting for Auckland in 2012, Fox-Matamua returned to the provincial squad in 2014 […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":5453,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[1836],"tags":[647,33,2228,2227,1981,1375],"class_list":["post-5452","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-home","tag-back","tag-connacht","tag-fox-matamua","tag-nepia","tag-row","tag-sign"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=5452"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":5454,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/5452\/revisions\/5454"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/5453"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=5452"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=5452"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/intouchrugby.com\/connacht\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=5452"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}