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<\/a> <\/p>\nTimoci Tavatavanwai has been given a long-awaited opportunity in the black jersey in Saturday\u2019s Wallabies showdown in Sydney, and he has some boxes to tick if his performance is to impress Dave Rennie.<\/p>\n
Last week the coach hinted that a selection could come the Highlanders<\/a> star\u2019s way this week, and with more injuries troubling All Blacks<\/a> camp, there was indeed room for Tavatavanawai to make his way into the matchday 23 for Bledisloe II.<\/p>\n The 28-year-old finished the Super Rugby Pacific<\/a> season tied with Quinn Tupaea for the most Player of the Year votes, only losing out on a tiebreaker. That effort wasn\u2019t enough to earn favour with Rennie, though, as Tavatavanawai missed selection for the first All Blacks squad of the year.<\/p>\n Recalled to an expanded Rugby\u2019s Greatest Rivalry squad, the powerful two-Test midfielder made his mark with two impact performances against the Sharks<\/a> and Bulls<\/a> before starting against the Lions, delivering a destructive performance with the ball in hand.<\/p>\n But with Jordie Barrett and Tupaea excelling as New Zealand\u2019s preferred midfield partnership, and Rennie still harbouring fitness doubts, Tavatavanawai has had to bide his time, working on his craft to earn his next opportunity in the Test arena. That opportunity has finally arrived.<\/p>\n Speaking on the selection in Sydney on Thursday afternoon, Rennie said: \u201cIt\u2019s cool. Obviously, with Leroy (Carter\u2019s)\u00a0injury, Josh (Moorby) comes into the starting lineup, and\u00a0we can use Rieko (Ioane) as a wing;\u00a0he was predominantly covering midfield last week, and so Big Jim (Tavatavanawai) comes in. Look, he\u2019s been great in the environment. He\u2019s got a real point of difference. We think he can offer a massive impact off the bench.\u201d<\/p>\n The coach went on to explain what he\u2019s looking for from \u2018Big Jim\u2019 at Accor Stadium on Saturday.<\/p>\n \u201cI think to be fair, during Super Rugby, he was a fair way off from a conditioning perspective, and he had a few niggles and\u00a0battled through that, and so we didn\u2019t pick him initially. We took him to South Africa because we felt that for him to make the World Cup, he\u2019s better to be in the tent with us, trying to make shifts and giving him an understanding of what\u2019s going to be important if he wants to play for the All Blacks.<\/p>\n \u201cAnd so he was great on tour. He\u2019s made good shifts. We want to see evidence of that on\u00a0the weekend when he comes on. But as you know, if you just watch the screen, any time he\u2019s anywhere near the ball, he\u2019s a menace. Carry, tackle, post-tackle. So, it\u00a0will be good to see plenty of that, and then the work ethic to go with that.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Published: 13 hours ago | 15 October 2026 00:05 EDT mens international Timoci Tavatavanawai of the All Blacks…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":631572,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[111,139,69,213],"class_list":["post-631571","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-sports","tag-new-zealand","tag-newzealand","tag-nz","tag-sports"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631571","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=631571"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/631571\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/631572"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=631571"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=631571"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=631571"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}![](\"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/nz\/wp-content\/uploads\/2026\/10\/like-loading.gif\")
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