\u201cIt\u2019s hard to say goodbye, but I\u2019m really grateful for the people, the memories and the chance to represent this club. <\/p>\n
\u201cWearing the jersey has been an honour and I hoped I have represented all this jersey stands for. Chiefs will always be home.\u201d<\/p>\n
Born in Tonga, Finau went to school in New Zealand before making his Waikato debut in 2019 and stepping up to the Chiefs squad for Super Rugby Aotearoa in 2021.<\/p>\n
After a breakout Super Rugby season with the Chiefs in 2023, Finau earned his maiden All Blacks call up, where he marked his test debut against the Wallabies in Dunedin with a try.<\/p>\n
He last played for the All Blacks in their 41-24 win over Argentina in Cordoba.<\/p>\n
Finau joins Hoskins Sotutu<\/a> (Newcastle), Dalton Papali\u2019i<\/a> (Castres), Sevu Reece<\/a> and Braydon Ennor (Perpignan), and Cullen Grace (Scarlets) in confirming their departures. David Havili<\/a> has also confirmed a move to Japan, although his new club is yet to be announced, while Stephen Perofeta<\/a> has been linked with Yokohama.<\/p>\n The Chiefs are losing more than 200 caps-worth of players with Xavier Roe, Etene Nanai-Seturo, Lalakai Foketi, Liam Coombes-Fabling and Reuben O\u2019Neill heading overseas.<\/p>\n The All Blacks play their first test of the year on Saturday, hosting France in Christchurch before facing Italy in Wellington and Ireland in Auckland.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"\u201cIt\u2019s hard to say goodbye, but I\u2019m really grateful for the people, the memories and the chance to…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":503884,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[74,5263,7022,8136,7285,17909,29861,13242,3468,49088,3009,251377,2082,19134,71,1759,700,114231,111,139,69,251376,48613,213,102,114000,80],"class_list":["post-503883","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-after","tag-all","tag-black","tag-blacks","tag-canon","tag-chiefs","tag-confirm","tag-confirms","tag-deal","tag-departure","tag-eagles","tag-finau","tag-for","tag-forward","tag-from","tag-japan","tag-latest","tag-loose","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-samipeni","tag-signing","tag-sports","tag-with","tag-yokohama","tag-zealand"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503883","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=503883"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/503883\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/503884"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=503883"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=503883"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=503883"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}