{"id":407214,"date":"2026-01-12T00:15:09","date_gmt":"2026-01-12T00:15:09","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/407214\/"},"modified":"2026-01-12T00:15:09","modified_gmt":"2026-01-12T00:15:09","slug":"all-black-hopeful-dylan-pledger-sidelined-for-12-months","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/407214\/","title":{"rendered":"All Black hopeful Dylan Pledger sidelined for 12 months"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"Dylan<\/p>\n

\nDylan Pledger scores for Otago.
\nPhoto: ActionPress\n<\/p>\n

In a brutal pre-season blow, one of the country’s most promising young players has been ruled out of rugby for the entire year.<\/p>\n

Highlanders halfback Dylan Pledger will spend 12 months on the sideline after rupturing his ACL at training.<\/p>\n

It is a cruel setback for the 20-year-old who had an outstanding 2025 in which he led Otago on a golden run to the NPC final and was set to make his Super Rugby debut.<\/p>\n

He also starred in the New Zealand Under 20 Rugby Championship win in South Africa.<\/p>\n

The Highlanders posted the news on its social media accounts and wrote that<\/p>\n

“Pledger is naturally disappointed but philosophical.”<\/p>\n

The schoolboy star said the injury was incredibly disappointing.<\/p>\n

“I was very excited about my first full season as a professional, I guess I have learned early that part of being a professional rugby player is dealing with injury.”<\/p>\n

Pledger was likely to share the number nine jersey with two test All Black Folau Fakatava, with the mercurial Magpie now set to shoulder halfback duties for the Highlanders.<\/p>\n

“My energy now will be put into rehabbing as best I can so I can come back in the best possible shape. I will be able to focus a bit more on my study too.”<\/p>\n

Sign up for Ng\u0101 Pitopito K\u014drero<\/a>, a daily newsletter curated by our editors and delivered straight to your inbox every weekday.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dylan Pledger scores for Otago. Photo: ActionPress In a brutal pre-season blow, one of the country’s most promising…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":407215,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,1590,63,1589,44,1591,1588,1586,1587,760,85],"class_list":["post-407214","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-au","tag-audio","tag-australia","tag-current-affairs","tag-news","tag-podcasts","tag-public-radio","tag-radio-new-zealand","tag-rnz","tag-rugby","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407214","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=407214"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/407214\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/407215"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=407214"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=407214"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=407214"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}