{"id":290555,"date":"2026-02-18T21:44:10","date_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:44:10","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290555\/"},"modified":"2026-02-18T21:44:10","modified_gmt":"2026-02-18T21:44:10","slug":"all-blacks-crusaders-midfielder-dallas-mcleod-signs-with-english-club-exeter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/290555\/","title":{"rendered":"All Blacks, Crusaders midfielder Dallas McLeod signs with English club Exeter"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"mXhlnsAMAlHgsvrv\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s pretty bittersweet for me,\u201d McLeod said. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mXhlnsAMAlHgsvrv\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI grew up watching the Crusaders and it was always a goal to wear the red and black. To actually live that out has meant everything.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"mXhlnsAMAlHgsvrv\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI owe a lot to this club,\u201d he added. <\/p>\n<p class=\"mXhlnsAMAlHgsvrv\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cI\u2019ve made some great mates along the way, and I\u2019ll miss the people here a lot. That\u2019s what makes this place special \u2013 they really look after you and always know how to get the best out of everyone who comes through this place.\u201d <\/p>\n<p class=\"mXhlnsAMAlHgsvrv\" style=\"display:none\">McLeod will replace Australia centre Len Ikitau at Exeter.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mXhlnsAMAlHgsvrv\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cDallas is a really important signing for us. We\u2019ve known that Len Ikitau would be returning to Australia and with Will Rigg also leaving at the end of the season, centre is an area we\u2019ve been looking to strengthen,\u201d Exeter Chiefs director of rugby Rob Baxter said.<\/p>\n<p class=\"mXhlnsAMAlHgsvrv\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cHe\u2019s a very experienced player, playing in a very good, very consistently high-performing team in New Zealand. He\u2019s still a player in his prime, someone who looks very consistent, with high accuracy in his game.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cHonestly, it\u2019s pretty bittersweet for me,\u201d McLeod said. \u201cI grew up watching the Crusaders and it was always&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":290556,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[5263,696,7022,8136,18836,56380,25056,11908,79696,33443,161105,116640,111,139,69,3236,8466,5652,213,8229,1961,2044,686,102],"class_list":{"0":"post-290555","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-sports","8":"tag-all","9":"tag-announced","10":"tag-black","11":"tag-blacks","12":"tag-club","13":"tag-crusaders","14":"tag-dallas","15":"tag-english","16":"tag-exeter","17":"tag-heading","18":"tag-mcleod","19":"tag-midfielder","20":"tag-new-zealand","21":"tag-newzealand","22":"tag-nz","23":"tag-overseas","24":"tag-second","25":"tag-signs","26":"tag-sports","27":"tag-they","28":"tag-this","29":"tag-time","30":"tag-week","31":"tag-with"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290555","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=290555"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/290555\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/290556"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=290555"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=290555"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=290555"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}