Dragons RFC can today announce that Solomone Funaki has left the club.<\/p>\n
Tonga international Funaki joined the Men of Gwent ahead of the 24\/25 season, having previously represented Moana Pasifika in Super Rugby.<\/p>\n
Funaki \u2013 who has also played for Hawke\u2019s Bay Magpies and was previously part of the Highlanders set-up \u2013 has now been released by mutual agreement to return to New Zealand.<\/p>\n
He leaves with our very best wishes for his future and Solomone and his family will always be warmly welcomed back to Rodney Parade.<\/p>\n
Head Coach Filo Tiatia said: \u201cIt\u2019s with a heavy heart that we have said farewell to Mone and he has left the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve seen Mone at his very best and he\u2019s been unfortunate that a nasty knee injury and infection means we sadly haven\u2019t seen that here.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m grateful that he has made a clear decision on his future and how he moves forward, with the full support of the club.<\/p>\n
\u201cI wish the best for Mone and his family for the future and I\u2019ll stay connected with him as a coach and as a friend.\u201d<\/p>\n
Solomone Funaki said: \u201cUnfortunately my knee and the plan to return has not gone as we hoped. It\u2019s been tough and I\u2019ve now made the decision, with the support of the club, to return to New Zealand to be with my family.<\/p>\n
\u201cI want to thank everyone at the club, the coaching staff, medical team and physios, for all the belief and all the hard work you put into me.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m sorry that it didn\u2019t work out for me to get back on the field to give you what we all wanted and contribute to this great club.<\/p>\n
\u201cTo the players, I appreciate your love and support. I do love this club, I\u2019ve enjoyed being here, and there is no regret over me coming over.<\/p>\n
\u201cI will continue to support you all from afar. It was awesome to see the last couple of games, winning back-to-back. I always believed this would come and hopefully this is just the start of something great.<\/p>\n
\u201cThank you all for the support and love during my time in Wales. Up the Dragons.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dragons RFC can today announce that Solomone Funaki has left the club. Tonga international Funaki joined the Men…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":333049,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":{"0":"post-333048","1":"post","2":"type-post","3":"status-publish","4":"format-standard","5":"has-post-thumbnail","7":"category-rugby","8":"tag-rugby","9":"tag-sports","10":"tag-uk","11":"tag-united-kingdom","12":"tag-unitedkingdom"},"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333048","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=333048"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/333048\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/333049"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=333048"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=333048"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=333048"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}