{"id":580273,"date":"2026-08-25T22:32:15","date_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:32:15","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/580273\/"},"modified":"2026-08-25T22:32:15","modified_gmt":"2026-08-25T22:32:15","slug":"saula-mau-breaks-down-in-tears-after-all-blacks-debut-in-win-over-lions","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/580273\/","title":{"rendered":"Saula Ma\u2019u breaks down in tears after All Blacks debut in win over Lions"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"TpGGueVENmajZwYgWe\" style=\"display:none\">Tongan-born Ma\u2019u, officially All Blacks no 1242, said he just hoped he made his family proud before he broke down in tears.<\/p>\n<p class=\"TpGGueVENmajZwYgWe\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cThank you to the heavenly Father for you know the blessings that he gave me to wear the black jersey and obviously my friends and family back home, my partner, Nia, mum and dad. Just grateful for the coaching staff, for the All Blacks giving me a chance to represent my family, my friends and my village back home. Hopefully I made them proud.<\/p>\n<p class=\"TpGGueVENmajZwYgWe\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cIt is a dream come true,\u201d he added.<\/p>\n<p class=\"TpGGueVENmajZwYgWe\" style=\"display:none\">On the status of his first All Blacks jersey, the 26-year-old said he would be holding onto it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"TpGGueVENmajZwYgWe\" style=\"display:none\">\u201cProbably going to sleep with it tonight,\u201d he joked. \u201cNo, going to keep it in a safe place\u201d.<\/p>\n<p class=\"TpGGueVENmajZwYgWe\" style=\"display:none\"><a href=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/cameron-mcmillan\/\" target=\"_self\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" title=\"https:\/\/www.nzherald.co.nz\/author\/cameron-mcmillan\/\">Cameron McMillan<\/a> has been a sports journalist since 2003 and is NZME\u2019s Deputy Head of Sport. <\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Tongan-born Ma\u2019u, officially All Blacks no 1242, said he just hoped he made his family proud before he&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":580274,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[285928,1443,74,5263,31867,7022,8136,38501,46300,22773,24004,35142,6097,78,20439,25270,52169,24533,111,139,69,1523,281980,213,11230,73172,6027],"class_list":["post-580273","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-285928","tag-about","tag-after","tag-all","tag-bench","tag-black","tag-blacks","tag-breaks","tag-broke","tag-comeback","tag-coming","tag-debut","tag-down","tag-in","tag-jersey","tag-johannesburg","tag-lions","tag-mau","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-over","tag-saula","tag-sports","tag-talking","tag-tears","tag-win"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580273","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=580273"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/580273\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/580274"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=580273"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=580273"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=580273"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}