Dragons currently have eight overseas players on the books for the coming season.<\/p>\n
Inisi, Paea and Tuitavuki are joined by Samoa scrum-half Ereatara Enari, South Africans Rob Hunt and Tinus de Beer, Argentine Rodrigo Martinez and New Zealander Terrell Peita, who is yet to link up with his new team-mates.<\/p>\n
All of them are leading contenders for the starting line-up – and Peita and the injured Enari are the only ones not involved this weekend – but have been signed to boost homegrown talent, not block it.<\/p>\n
Dragons head coach Filo Tiatia did just that when playing at the Ospreys, one of the overseas players that had a huge role in developing a positive environment for the likes of Justin Tipuric, Alun Wyn Jones, Dan Biggar, James Hook and Rhys Webb.<\/p>\n
“When recruiting it is critical that players are going to add something that we don’t have,” said Tiatia, a twice-capped former All Black whose brother, Ace, played for Samoa.<\/p>\n
“They are all good men with leadership and willingness to share knowledge to grow some of our young players.<\/p>\n
“They are men of faith, similar to me, and I understand them pretty well. I trust that they will add to our game and challenge.”<\/p>\n
As with a Welsh signing, there are no guarantees in recruitment.<\/p>\n
Dragons signed Tongan number eight Solomone Funaki in 2024 with the hope of him being a destructive presence, but knee problems meant he left without playing a competitive game.<\/p>\n
Hamstring surgery has denied Tiatia the chance to press Super Rugby winner Enari into immediate action but the early signs are promising with Tuitavuki.<\/p>\n
“Anzelo has been fantastic,” said Tiatia, who coached the wing and Inisi during a spell at Moana Pasifika.<\/p>\n
“He is a great communicator and defensively is world-class around scanning opportunities, pictures, threats. He has been really good for our young group.”<\/p>\n
Dragons have twice had a strong South African influence.<\/p>\n
They inherited Andy Marinos and Percy Montgomery from Newport RFC in 2003 and they were joined by Bobby Skinstad and Shawn van Rensburg.<\/p>\n
The Dragons side defeated by Montpellier in the 2016 Challenge Cup semi-finals featured Brok Harris, Rynard Landman, Sarel Pretorius and Carl Meyer.<\/p>\n
In 2008-9 there was a Kiwi twang in Newport thanks to the presence of Tom Willis, Nigel Hall, Grant Webb, Hoani MacDonald, plus Japan fly-half James Arlidge from Hamilton.<\/p>\n
Now it is the turn of the Tongan trio to try and become overseas cult heroes.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Dragons currently have eight overseas players on the books for the coming season. Inisi, Paea and Tuitavuki are…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":789431,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[35],"tags":[5903,101,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-789430","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-rugby","tag-rugby","tag-sports","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789430","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=789430"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/789430\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/789431"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=789430"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=789430"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=789430"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}