Joining Connacht – then coached by fellow Aucklander Pat Lam – proved the launching pad. <\/p>\n
In the 2015-16 season, he missed only one game as the side won their first Pro12 title. Aki was named player of the year and, having completed a three-year residency period as per World Rugby rules at the time, he became eligible to represent Ireland before the 2017 autumn internationals.<\/p>\n
His inclusion in the Irish squad sparked an intense debate around World Rugby’s three-year residency rule – which was later extended to five – but Aki says he has learned to block out the outside noise.<\/p>\n
“It was always there,” he said of the noise surrounding the rule.<\/p>\n
“Obviously a lot of people interviewed me about it. I tried to stay away from it because I knew of the noise going around, guys getting angry about it. <\/p>\n
“I would lie to say I didn’t see it. A lot of online stuff. It just comes with it. I was lucky having people around me, my partner said, ‘you don’t need to worry about it, you just need to perform and then that’s it’.”<\/p>\n
Fellow New Zealand-born backs James Lowe and Jamison Gibson-Park also qualified for Ireland under the residency rule and Aki said they still “get noises about it”. <\/p>\n
He added: “I think it’s just part of it. I have no issues with people’s opinions. Unless they come and say it to my face while my kids and wife are there, that’s a different story.<\/p>\n
“It’s alright for people to say what they’re going to say. It’s not going to hurt me.”<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Joining Connacht – then coached by fellow Aucklander Pat Lam – proved the launching pad. In the 2015-16…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":412556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[567],"tags":[64,63,760,85],"class_list":{"0":"post-412555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-au","9":"tag-australia","10":"tag-rugby","11":"tag-sports"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412555","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=412555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/412555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/412556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=412555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=412555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/au\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=412555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}